"
"Ah!" I sighed, "if I could have gone to college!"
"What for, then? My father was a Hieland farmer, and yet he was a weel
learned man: and 'Sandy, my lad,' he used to say, 'a man kens just as
much as he's taught himsel', and na mair. So get wisdom; and wi' all your
getting, get understanding.' And so I did. And mony's the Greek exercise
I've written in the cowbyres. And mony's the page o' Virgil, too, I've
turned into good Dawric Scotch to ane that's dead and gane, poor hizzie,
sitting under the same plaid, with the sheep feeding round us, up among
the hills, looking out ower the broad blue sea, and the wee haven wi' the
fishing cobles--"
There was a long solemn pause. I cannot tell why, but I loved the man from
that moment; and I thought, too, that he began to love me. Those few words
seemed a proof of confidence, perhaps all the deeper, because accidental
and unconscious.
I took the Virgil which he lent me, with Hamilton's literal translation
between the lines, and an old tattered Latin grammar; I felt myself quite
a learned man--actually the possessor of a Latin book! I regarded as
something almost miraculous the opening of this new field for my ambition.
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