From ploughshare to pulpit

There was something well calculated to raise the spirits of such a man as Mackenzie on this balmy spring morning. Mackenzie was the minister of the parish of Belhaven, a parish...

The farm of Kilbuie was by no means of large dimensions, though it was a farm, and not merely a croft. Nor was it, at the time our story commences, in very flourishing condition...

Sandie M‘Craw’s study was unique in its way. To get to it he had to enter the stable first, then scramble up a straight ladder fastened against the wall, and so through a trap-d...

When Sandie awoke again, he felt so much fresher, lightsomer, and better, and was admitted by the doctor to be so far recovered that he was permitted to sit up a little and enga...

Fortune or fate had dealt so very hardly with honest Farmer Kilbuie last season, that he might reasonably have expected now some surcease of sorrow--a respite, if not indeed a f...

A low large squat building, with an iron-railed quad, a building with two wings in front and two running out behind, abutting on to the grounds of the Gordon Hospital or Sillert...

Home with Sandie to his rural residence went Willie Munro. Willie had invited himself. Willie would not be denied. It was all in vain that Sandie had told him flatly that he wou...

More than once during this week Sandie M‘Crae experienced an almost irresistible longing to get back to his books. What, he could not help saying to himself, would dear old Hora...

With her own hands did she prepare them a delicious hot draught of mulled heather-ale, with soft biscuit broken up in it, for it was a long time ere the dinner-hour.

The great day had come at last--the day that was going to be big with our hero’s fate. It was early yet, however--hardly seven, and still pitch dark. Sandie lifted the blinds in...

As soon after four o’clock as possible, it had been announced, the result of the competition would be made to the students from one of the windows near to the Senatus-room and o...

“Now, daddie,” he said straightforwardly, “I am going to borrow money from you. Mind you, it is only a loan, and as soon as I get my first bursary money I will refund.”

Some of the greatest treats Sandie enjoyed were his invitations out to breakfast with his professors, some even whose classes he was not yet attending inviting him. He could har...

When Christmas-time came round, Sandie M‘Crae not only felt that he needed a week’s rest, but that he had worked hard enough to deserve one. It was therefore with a feeling of i...

My well-beloved reader--what a pretty expression, by the way!--must not jump to the conclusion that this chapter, and those that follow, describe life at the Northern University...

The close of that same winter session is memorable for a riot of such a strange character, and of such startling dimensions, that I make no apology for giving a brief descriptio...

The close of the session had come. Soon the streets, that had all winter long been rendered so gay and cheerful by the flash of the scarlet togas and the merry laugh of the wear...

The landlady of the little inn, at which Sandie and Willie had dined so sumptuously, was a chatty wee body. Like most chatty wee bodies, she was by no means averse to being info...

The house itself stood with one of its gables towards the sea, as if it had fallen out with the sea and was giving it the cold shoulder. It was separated from high-water mark by...

Week after week the herring-fishery went by, and certainly John Menzies had no reason to complain of his want of success. Never a day passed that he did not send his hauls in ba...

Young Sandie M‘Crae was a powerful swimmer, and as he reaches the surface of the water he stares wildly round him; but he finds that alone by his side floats John himself, and i...

Sorrow does not hold the young heart long enthralled. It is as well it should be so. It is for the old to feel sad, unless they can see in imagination the bright and gladsome li...

Classes were once more up. The session had opened, and once again the streets of Aberdeen were gay with the crimson togas of the students. Everybody was glad to see everybody el...

It really does seem surprising, when we come to consider it, that those two humble Scottish students, knowing that they were rivals, well aware that they would have to fight aga...

The _Boo-boo-boo_ was a crack Aberdeen clipper barque, of large dimensions, and though not in the habit of carrying passengers, beautifully fitted aft, with a saloon like a marb...

It was the dead of a dreary winter in the Straits of Magellan, about the beginning of July--the seasons, as I need hardly tell my young readers, being quite the reverse of ours-...

All that day the _musgo_ lasted. The night closed in early. It closed in so pitchy dark and gloomy, that even Captain D’Acre himself was fain to confess he had never seen anythi...

How strange it all seemed! And how unreal! Only yesterday bounding along in their own good barque, their home on the ocean wave, filled with hope, and even happiness. To-day, af...

But that island was no mirage. Of this all hands were speedily convinced, and redoubled their efforts to pump the vessel and keep her afloat until they could reach it. Breakfast...

What a pleasant voyage that was to Sydney! Our heroes had nothing to do but talk and read, and laze dreamily in the sparkling sunshine, or under the quarter-deck awning.

The reader may never know how much of my own young life is depicted in these pages. Many a time and often have I laughed as recollections of schoolboy or student pranks have ris...