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the schoolroom, and handed over to the governess, in whose bedroom we now slept, instead of in the nursery. We at once began to learn the alphabet and to sew, and at six or seven years of age we were not contemptible needle-women. We made our own pinafores ourselves, and lots of the family underclothing was made in the schoolroom; parts of everything were done by us at that early age. Every Saturday forenoon, from 10 to 12 o'clock, was spent in mending our clothes and darning our stockings. Broken strings had to be unpicked, the worn part cut off by our governess, and the good bit of tape neatly sewed on again. Frocks and pinafores, torn in getting over or through fences, had all to be nicely darned: these we considered very troublesome, and to avoid such work, we often took more care of our clothes. But the two hours of mending were far from dull, as we sang song after song the whole time, at least after Miss P. became our governess. She sang no end of Scotch songs, and paid attention to make us sing correctly, by the ear, no end of Jacobite ones, of which our father was very fond. And she also did, at enormous trouble to herself, teach us to sing Gaelic ones, though she knew nothing of that language. Sometimes our father wished us to learn a good old Gaelic song he had once heard one of our maidservants, or perhaps a shepherd's daughter, sing: the servant or country girl was sent into the schoolroom on various occasions till Miss P. and one or more of us mastered the air by the ear, and then she wrote down the words, also by the ear, till we had it fit to sing after dinner, when our father corrected any wrong pronunciation; the air was certain to be correct. I know I was working my sampler before M. was sent to school in London, about 1819, when I probably was hardly six years of age. I was always far behind with reading and spelling, in consequence of bad sight. I think we began arithmetic at seven years of age, as well as writing, and never touched the piano till we were nine; French, I think, when we were about eleven; dancing, vocal music, Italian, when we were about sixteen, at which age most of us had final class masters, and were at school in London. This arrangement was not calculated to make us first-rate musicians or linguists. Most of our aunts admired my mother's children for their practical usefulness, which their own, though far more accomplished, failed in. My mother cut out most of the family underclothing, and had one of us down from the schoolroom to fold up the pieces neatly as they were cut; so at nine years of age we had a very good idea of cutting out, which we practised in making our own dolls' clothes, which, when new, were dressed as ladies, with bonnets, tippets, cloaks, &c. When these dolls got old and tashed, we painted their faces to look like men, with whiskers, and dressed them as sailors or Highlanders, and even got the gamekeeper to dress the skin of a mouse (head and all), of which we made a suitable purse for our Highlander.

Sunday, and all through the week, we were called at 7 A.M., and did our Bible lesson from 8 to 9, at which hour we breakfasted, which could never have taken us more than ten minutes; then out to play. Sometimes, I may say in general, we three schoolroom children breakfasted alone on porridge and milk, and nothing