I was born at No - The MAN & Other Families

8I may here say something about our religious training. Our mother was very low churchand we used to attend both morning and evening service St. Silas Episcopal Church inWoodland's Road. The first incumbent we knew was a Mr. Maynard. In these days theclergyman wore a white surplice while conducting the service but changed to a blackgown before mounting the pulpit for the sermon. The organ was in a gallery at the backof the church and the mixed choir (un-surpliced) were also in the gallery.Mr. Maynard died very soon after our joining the church and was succeeded by Dr,Hutton. We used to enjoy Dr. Hutton's sermons. He was somewhat of a prophet - Russiawas public enemy No. 1 in these days and he used to predict from texts from the OldTestament that the King of the North (Russia) would engage in deadly combat with theKing of the South (Great Britain) and this would be "Armageddon".In addition to Church going we had every Sunday to learn by heart the collect for the dayand a portion of a chapter from the New Testament or a Psalm or one of the Paraphrasesat the end of the Scotch bible. As a consequence I can still, with a little prompting, repeatall the collett, most of the better known psalms, all the paraphrases, all the gospels andmany of the epistles. In Aunt Galloway's time also we learned the so-called shorterCatechism, and this also with a little prompting I could still recite.I used to visualize God as a very old man with a white beard, sitting on a throne abovethe sky, keeping a continual watch over our doings and ready to pounce down and punishus for every naughty action. There used to be a book-marker in one of our bibles orSunday books with the picture of an enormous eye looking down through the clouds withthe motto "Thou God sees’t me".Although I know and realize that this conception of God is all wrong, yet even now whenI think of God, I cannot help thinking of him as an old man on a throne.On the departure of Miss Moewing, Mary and Aggie went to school (day) at Chalmers &Dicks' "West of Scotland Institution" , a school for young ladies and I was sent to aprivate school kept by a man called Stark in Belhaven Terrace I think, anyhow it was inthe terrace immediately south of the Botanic Gardens. I was then eight years old. I wellremember the first day at school.I was carefully dressed in, of all things, a velvet suit and my hair well smeared with"pomade", a mixture resembling Vaseline which Janet used to smear on our hair everyday to keep it smooth, and, horror of horrors, I was armed with an umbrella. It is notstrange therefore that I was taken for a "sissy" by a very rough set of boys and treatedaccordingly. It was a mixed school of boys and girls. There were only two class-rooms,one presided over by Mr. Stark and the other by a Mr. Dunn. We were taught singingonce a week and had a weekly lesson in elocution from an ex-actor of the old school, tall,clean shaven, with a very sallow complexion and long black hair. He wore a typical longblack overcoat with an astrachan collar and a broad-brimmed black wide-awake hat. Hewas the editor of a book of elocution exercises which we used to study. Some of these Iremember. One was:-