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James Nasmyth: Engineer; an autobiography by James Nasmyth
page 39 of 490 (07%)
was not in its place; but the leaders of the mob hanged him from a
dyer's pole, nearly opposite the gallows stone, on the south side of
the street, not far from my grandfather's door*
[footnote...
See Heart of Midlothian
...]

I have not much to say about my father's education. For the most part,
he was his own schoolmaster. I have heard him say that his mother
taught him his A B C; and that he afterwards learned to read at Mammy
Smith's. This old lady kept a school for boys and girls at the top of
a house in the Grassmarket. There my father was taught to rear his
Bible, and to repeat his Carritch.*
[footnote...
The Shorter Catechism.
...]

As it was only the bigger boys who could read the Bible, the strongest
of them consummated the feat by climbing up the Castle rock, and
reaching what they called "The Bibler's Seat." It must have been a
break-neck adventure to get up to the place. The seat was almost
immediately under the window of the room in which James VI was born.
My father often pointed it out to me as one of the most dangerous bits
of climbing in which he had been engaged in his younger years.

[Image] The Bibler's seat

The annexed illustration is from his own slight sepia drawing;
the Bibler's Seat is marked + Not so daring, but much more mischievous,
was a trick which he played with some of his companions on the tops of
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