Practically all my school days were spent at Derby.  As I have said, ours was a large family.  I have referred to an only sister, but I had step-sisters and step-brothers too.  My father married twice and the second family was numerous.  His salary was never more than 300 pounds a year, and though a prudent enough man, he was not of the frugal economical sort who makes the most of every shilling.  It may be imagined, then, that all the income was needed for a family that, parents included, but excluding the one servant, numbered eleven.  The consequence was that the education I received could not be described as liberal.  I attended a day school at Derby, connected with the Wesleyans; why I do not know, as we belonged to the Anglican Church; but I believe it was because the school, while cheap as to fees, had the reputation of giving a good, plain education suitable for boys destined for railway work.  It was a good sized school of about a hundred boys.  Not long ago I met one day in London a business man who, it turned out, was at this school with me.  We had not met for fifty years.  “Well,” said he, “I think old Jessie, if he did not teach us a great variety of things, what he did he taught well.”  My new-found old schoolmate had become the financial manager of a great business house having ramifications throughout the world.  He had attained to position and wealth and, which successful men sometimes are not, was quite unspoiled.  We revived our schooldays with mutual pleasure, and lunched together as befitted the occasion.

“Jessie” was the name by which our old schoolmaster was endeared to his boys; a kindly, simple-minded, worthy man, teaching, as well as scholastic subjects, behaviour, morals, truth, loyalty; and these as much by example as by precept, impressing ever upon us the virtue of thoroughness in all we did and of truth in all we said.  Since those days I have seen many youths, educated at much finer and more pretentious schools, who have benefited by modern educational methods, and on whose education much money has been expended, and who, when candidates for clerkships, have, in the simple matters of reading, writing, arithmetic, composition and spelling, shown up very poorly compared to what almost any boy from “old Jessie’s” unambitious establishment would have done.  But, plain and substantial as my schooling was, I have ever felt that I was defrauded of the better part of education—­the classics, languages, literature and modern science, which furnish the mind and extend the boundaries of thought.

“Jessie” continued his interest in his boys long after they left school.  He was proud of those who made their way.  I remember well the warmth of his greeting and the kind look of his mild blue eyes when, after I had gone out into the world, I sometimes revisited him.