Merchiston Castle School, 1855-58

Recollections of Merchiston
3
Edinburgh. He may have skipped the latter in favour
of the former, and if he found a Presbyterian church so
disagreeable, as he now represents, he had no occasion
to repeat the visit, for I do not remember that
a wet Sunday was allowed to stand in the way
of a walk to Edinburgh. As his memory seems
treacherous, I can assure him that he was not called
" a little, bloated, bigoted, English, Episcopalian
idolater." Sectarian differences did not enter into
school life. The Disruption of 1843 was a com-
paratively recent event in 1856, but it did not affect
the boys.
He says that there were no holidays at Christmas
and that he got special leave to go home at that time.
This also is a lapse of memory. There were always
regular Christmas holidays. The holidays of the pre-
ceding Christmas, that of 1855, were made memorable
by a very sad occurrence.
On the night before the school broke up there
was a little play in which James Stephen took a
prominent part, and in the course of which George
Hastie—a little old-fashioned boy, full of songs
and stories—son of the Free Church minister at
Ecclefechan, sang The Dog and Mouse " from
1'