sistence, she removed to Paisley, and taught a school for small children, which, with her pension as a surgeon's widow, was all her earthly dependence, until her talents as a teacher and her beautiful pious consistency under trial led her constant friend, Mrs. Major Brown (also then in Scotland), to unite several other influential Christian persons to propose that she should open a boarding-school of a high order in Edinburgh (1779), which she taught with great success until her removal to New York in 1789. The reader will observe that from her seventh to her eleventh year she was under the immediate care and instruction of her own mother, whose faculty of teaching the young was the most remarkable of all her distinguished gifts of usefulness, and this, too, during the years when her piety abounded in her deep poverty and sanctified sorrow. Mrs. Bethune was the daughter of a schoolmistress, and her earliest conscious years were spent in her mother's school for young children. The later developments of her intelligent and successful zeal for the religious education of the young prove that the purpose of God concerning her was then in preparation for its fulfillment.

CHAPTER III.

EARLY EDUCATION AND ASSOCIATIONS.

At School.-Her Teachers.-Distinguished Ministers.-Erskine.Davidson. Witherspoon.—A Playmate of Walter Scott.-Lady Glenorchy; her Biography.

IT would seem from one of her records that about this time, probably while Mrs. Graham was getting her school and home in order, Joanna spent nearly a year in the family of her aunt in Glasgow, when in 1780 she was taken again under her mother's immediate care, participating in the advantages of the excellent school, and the instructions of the eminent masters whom Mrs. Graham called to her aid. Among these, Mrs. Bethune retained a strong sense of obligation to Mr. Scott (author of the once famous book of rhetorical instruction known as "Scott's Lessons") and Mr. Butterworth, the first writing-master who prepared engraved copies for his pupils, and illustrations of the hand holding the pen. To the latter Mrs. Bethune owed the accomplishment of a peculiarly bold, free, and distinct hand-writing, which she retained as long as she continued to use her pen. To Mr. Scott she was indebted for a knowledge of the art of speech and gesture, which made herself the best teacher of elocution the writer of these pages has ever met with. Thus, at each step of her life, and as her mind

was ripening, did Providence place her in successively higher positions to cultivate her love for education, and ability to advance it on the soundest principles.

But her heavenly Father made yet more striking provision for her religious improvement. Mrs. Graham's respectability of birth-much more, her higħ intellectual cultivation, and, more than all, her rich endowments of Divine grace shining mildly but unmistakably through her modest virtues, brought around her a considerable circle of friends, some of them conspicuous for rank and professional distinction, as well as unusual piety. Among these were the Rev. Dr. Erskine and the Rev. Dr. Davidson, who, as the, Rev. Mr. Randal,* of Glasgow, had been one of her earliest friends while at Paisley, whose ministry she attended while in Edinburgh; the Rev. Dr. Witherspoon, during his visit to Edinburgh (1785), from whose conversation respecting America as a land in which the Church of God was eminently to flourish, Mrs. Graham derived her providential impulses to come with her children to the United States; and other revered clergymen. One of her near neighbors and cherished intimate friends was Mrs. Walter Scott (the mother of the poet), of whose excellent spirit and affectionate kindness Mrs. Bethune often spoke warmly to her children.

It will be interesting here to give some of Mrs. Bethune's reminiscences of young Walter at this time. *The author believes that this change of name was a condition of his inheriting a fortune, but he has no account of it.

Waltie, as he was familiarly called, Mrs. Bethune described as an amiable, kindly lad, who, from his lameness, was not allowed to play with lads of his age, lest he should suffer from their rough sports, and therefore found his playmates among the girls, with whom he was a special favorite. Their playground was an inclosed space or square, to which the families of the houses round resorted (Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Graham being of the number); and here, upon the grass, it was his special delight to get troops of the young ladies to act little dramas of Border history, the main feature of which was a division into two opposing parties (Englishmen and Scots), who made raids into each other's territory across the Border line, and carried off, if successful, bonnets, shawls, and other articles of clothing deposited for the purpose, as booty. So early did his ruling passion show itself.

At another time the young Joanna, with some other young companions, were spending the afternoon at Mrs. Scott's, when there came up a tremendous thunder-storm, in Edinburgh of comparatively rare occurrence, which so alarmed the little girls that they ran to throw themselves on the feather-beds for safety from the electric fluid. The boy Waltie, being of course excluded, shut himself up in his room, and on the reassembling at the tea-table he produced what appeared to his partial auditors some extraordinarily fine verses on the storm. Sir Walter, in his autobiography, alludes to these verses as among his earli

est attempts at verse, in which he says he stole all the ideas and a good share of the rhymes from an old magazine. The writer had often heard the story from his mother before the autobiography reached this country. Sir Walter did not wholly forget his early playmate, but in more than one case introduced friends coming to New York to Mrs. Bethune, and there is now in possession of the writer a copy, quarto, of the first edition of the "Lay of the last Minstrel," which was (as his parents told him) ordered to be sent out by the author. Unfortunately, the poet's autograph is not on it as a presentation copy; nor can any one of the several letters be found, owing to an unfortunate scattering of a portion of Mrs. Bethune's papers, which has been the occasion of many similar losses. Mrs. Bethune was so confident of Sir Walter's kindly recollection of her, that she was anxious her son should bear a letter of introduction to him from her; but his visit to Abbotsford could not be paid until after the Wizard of the North had ceased to breathe his mighty spells over an admiring world. It may be added that in Mrs. Bethune's family the full conviction that none other than her early playmate in "Englishmen and Scots" could be the author of "Waverley," antedated many years his own avowal of the anonymous splendor of those unequaled romances, Mrs. Bethune having detected, as she thought, some unmistakable evidences of "Waltie Scott's hand."

But the friend of Mrs. Graham, most beloved and