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Muir, John, 1838-1914

"The Story of My Boyhood and Youth"

I presume you're able to enter the Freshman class, and you
can board yourself as quite a number of us do at a cost of about a
dollar a week. The baker and milkman come every day. You can live on
bread and milk." Well, I thought, maybe I have money enough for at
least one beginning term. Anyhow I couldn't help trying.
With fear and trembling, overladen with ignorance, I called on
Professor Stirling, the Dean of the Faculty, who was then Acting
President, presented my case, and told him how far I had got on with
my studies at home, and that I hadn't been to school since leaving
Scotland at the age of eleven years, excepting one short term of a
couple of months at a district school, because I could not be spared
from the farm work. After hearing my story, the kind professor
welcomed me to the glorious University--next, it seemed to me, to the
Kingdom of Heaven. After a few weeks in the preparatory department I
entered the Freshman class. In Latin I found that one of the books in
use I had already studied in Scotland. So, after an interruption of a
dozen years, I began my Latin over again where I had left off; and,
strange to say, most of it came back to me, especially the grammar
which I had committed to memory at the Dunbar Grammar School.


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