My own first experience of school life was near Crieff, where I spent a year in the family of an English clergyman, whom I dimly remember as a model for the head of the Fairchild family. For all his austerity, my recollections are of cheerful days spent under his charge, and especially of a keen relish for meals, which may be connected with the fact that this was the only period in my life when I might not eat as much as I pleased. But also I have two painful memories of this place. The first is breaking my arm on the rocks of the Turret one Saturday afternoon, and not getting a doctor for it till Monday evening: my tutor, who had been a soldier before he took orders, and ought to have known better, judged the hurt no more than a sprain; then on Sunday I had to walk three miles to church, and back, with my arm hanging helpless, the torment relieved only by my brother holding it up. The other woeful experience was my own fault, and such as many sons of Adam have to confess. Some years later, I was sent on a holiday task, a ride of seventeen miles with a pointer pup to be handed over at Crieff to a keeper, whose lodge made a sort of canine academy. I was to dine at the “Drummond Arms,” after making sure to see my pony fed first--a sound instruction to heedless youth. Somewhat elated by this independent charge, as I strolled about the town it occurred to me that my own meal ought to be crowned by a cigar. It was my first; it cost twopence. “Left to myself” as I was in that rash undertaking, I had sense enough to seek out for it a secluded spot on the banks and braes of the Earn, where ere long my song would be--“How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair!”
At Crieff, with its two railways and everything handsome about it, we get upon a regular caravan route of tourists, too few of whom stop to discover the lochs, falls, and shaggy glens that around it are strung upon the Highland line, among hills making with the Earn valley a choice epitome of Perth scenery. I have already extolled this neighbourhood in _Bonnie Scotland_, so now I must pass quickly over the most picturesque part of Strathearn. Nothing could be prettier in its way than the walk up the Earn, foaming and rippling through its leafy banks, past wooded eminences, like Torleum, whose top makes a weather-glass for the countryside, and Tomachastle, crowned by a monument to Sir David Baird, the hero of Seringapatam. This local worthy’s widow cherished his renown regardless of expense, the model village of St. David’s, below Crieff, being also a memorial of him; but