The third book contained interesting stories as well as plain reading-and spelling-lessons.  To me the best story of all was “Llewellyn’s Dog,” the first animal that comes to mind after the needle-voiced field mouse.  It so deeply interested and touched me and some of my classmates that we read it over and over with aching hearts, both in and out of school and shed bitter tears over the brave faithful dog, Gelert, slain by his own master, who imagined that he had devoured his son because he came to him all bloody when the boy was lost, though he had saved the child’s life by killing a big wolf.  We have to look far back to learn how great may be the capacity of a child’s heart for sorrow and sympathy with animals as well as with human friends and neighbors.  This auld-lang-syne story stands out in the throng of old schoolday memories as clearly as if I had myself been one of that Welsh hunting-party—­heard the bugles blowing, seen Gelert slain, joined in the search for the lost child, discovered it at last happy and smiling among the grass and bushes beside the dead, mangled wolf, and wept with Llewellyn over the sad fate of his noble, faithful dog friend.

Another favorite in this book was Southey’s poem “The Inchcape Bell,” a story of a priest and a pirate.  A good priest in order to warn seamen in dark stormy weather hung a big bell on the dangerous Inchcape Rock.  The greater the storm and higher the waves, the louder rang the warning bell, until it was cut off and sunk by wicked Ralph the Rover.  One fine day, as the story goes, when the bell was ringing gently, the pirate put out to the rock, saying, “I’ll sink that bell and plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok.”  So he cut the rope, and down went the bell “with a gurgling sound; the bubbles rose and burst around,” etc.  Then “Ralph the Rover sailed away; he scoured the seas for many a day; and now, grown rich with plundered store, he steers his course for Scotland’s shore.”  Then came a terrible storm with cloud darkness and night darkness and high roaring waves, “Now where we are,” cried the pirate, “I cannot tell, but I wish I could hear the Inchcape bell.”  And the story goes on to tell how the wretched rover “tore his hair,” and “curst himself in his despair,” when “with a shivering shock” the stout ship struck on the Inchcape Rock, and went down with Ralph and his plunder beside the good priest’s bell.  The story appealed to our love of kind deeds and of wildness and fair play.

A lot of terrifying experiences connected with these first schooldays grew out of crimes committed by the keeper of a low lodging-house in Edinburgh, who allowed poor homeless wretches to sleep on benches or the floor for a penny or so a night, and, when kind Death came to their relief, sold the bodies for dissection to Dr. Hare of the medical school.  None of us children ever heard anything like the original story.  The servant girls told us that “Dandy Doctors,” clad in long black cloaks and supplied with a store