The Right Stuff Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE.

OATMEAL AND THE SHORTER CATECHISM.

The first and most-serious-but-one ordeal in the life of Robert Chalmers Fordyce—so Robert Chalmers himself informed me years afterwards—was the examination for the Bursary which he gained at Edinburgh University. A bursary is what an English undergraduate would call a "Schol." (Imagine a Scottish student talking about a "Burse"!)

Robert Chalmers Fordyce arrived in Edinburgh pretty evenly divided between helpless stupefaction at the sight of a great city and stern determination not to be imposed upon by the inhabitants thereof. His fears were not as deep-seated as those of Tom Pinch on a similar occasion,—he, it will be remembered, suffered severe qualms from his familiarity with certain rural traditions concerning the composition of London pies,—but he was far from happy. He had never slept away from his native hillside before; he had never seen a town possessing more than three thousand inhabitants; and he had only once travelled in a train.

Moreover, he was proceeding to an inquisition which would decide once and for all whether he was to go forth and conquer the world with a university education behind him, or go back to the plough and sup porridge for the rest of his life. To-morrow he was to have his opportunity, and the consideration of how that opportunity could best be gripped and brought to the ground blinded Robin even to the wonders of the Forth Bridge.

He sat in the corner of the railway carriage, passing in review the means of conquest at his disposal. His actual stock of scholarship, he knew, was well up to the required standard: he was as letter perfect in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and Literature as hard study and remorseless coaching could make him. Everything needful was in his head—but could he get it out again? That was the question. The roaring world in which he would find himself, the strange examination-room, the quizzing professors—would these combine with his native shyness to seal the lips and cramp the pen of Robert Chalmers Fordyce? No—a thousand times no! He would win through! Robert set his teeth, braced himself, and kicked the man opposite.

He apologised, attributing the discourtesy to the length of his legs—he stood about six feet three—and smiled so largely and benignantly, that the Man Opposite, who had intended to be thoroughly disagreeable, melted at once, and said it was the fault of the Company for providing such restricted accommodation, and gave Robert The Scotsman to read.

Robert thanked him, and, effacing himself behind The Scotsman,—though, for all the instruction or edification that his present frame of mind permitted him to extract from that coping-stone of Scottish journalism, he might as well have been reading the Koran,—returned to his thoughts. He collated in his mind the pieces of advice which had been bestowed upon him by his elders and betters before his departure. In brief, their collective wisdom came to this:—

His father had bidden him—

• (a) To address all professors with whom he might come in contact as "Sir";
• (b) To arrive at the Examination each morning at least five minutes before the advertised time;
• (c) To refrain from lending money to, or otherwise countenancing the advances of, persons of insinuating address who would doubtless accost him in the streets of Edinburgh....