My friends say that if I had chanced to lie the other way my hair might not have been so sandy, nor my mind of so solemn a cast.

This I know, that more than once in my life, when my Scotch head could see no way out of a danger, my good thick English legs have come to my help, and carried me clear away.
But at school I never heard the end of this, for they would call me "Half-and-half" and "The Great Britain," and sometimes "Union Jack." When there was a battle between the Scotch and English boys, one side would kick my shins and the other cuff my ears, and then they would both stop and laugh as though it were something funny.
At first I was very miserable at the Berwick Academy.

Birtwhistle was the first master, and Adams the second, and I had no love for either of them.

I was shy and backward by nature, and slow at making a friend either among masters or boys.

It was nine miles as the crow flies, and eleven and a half by road, from Berwick to West Inch, and my heart grew heavy at the weary distance that separated me from my mother; for, mark you, a lad of that age pretends that he has no need of his mother's caresses, but ah, how sad he is when he is taken at his word! At last I could stand it no longer, and I determined to run away from the school and make my way home as fast as I might.