in the great world, he now resolved to get a newspaper. With that object in view he opened communication with the editor of the Fife Herald, and induced him to accept his offer to furnish him with the news of the town of his habitation in exchange for his weekly paper. When it was known that the weekly carrier put such a prize into Mr Stuart's hand, he was inundated with applications for a reading of it; and in the interest of peace he had to give his landlady—Granny Brown—a discretionary power in lending it. In 1837 he bought the goodwill of an 'adventure school' at Leven, Fifeshire, which enabled him to start with one scholar at threepence per week.[1] For six weeks he met his solitary pupil for the full number of regulation hours. This circumstance drawing general attention, led to an attendance of pupils which put it within his power in three years to enter St. Andrews University. A bursary, and assistance in kind from a home which never withheld from him prayer or sympathy or cheer, placed him at his ease for the four years of his undergraduate course. 'When I went to college,' he once said, 'my first engagement was to join a firm of six members to secure the celebrated Edinburgh Witness, edited by Hugh Miller. We prized the prelections of our professors, but the arrival of our newspaper never failed to withdraw us for an hour from science and philosophy. The questions and discussions with which it dealt had an irresistible charm. Prizing the newspaper, I never grudged its cost, or deemed the hours devoted to its study as wasted or lost.'
"The quiet university town felt the non-intrusion agitation, which shook Scotland from end to end, and in 1843 caused the disruption of its historic Church. The movement influenced the students—some standing by the authorities in favour of the existing order of things, and others going for reform in the Church and in the government of the University. The election of the Lord Rector became a casus belli. The reform party brought forward Dr Thomas Chalmers in opposition to the nominee of the Senatus, and carried his election. Mr Stuart, who represented his 'nation,' voted with the majority. The Senatus in its haste summoned the rebels, as they were termed, and
- ↑ A letter received by the writer from Dr Stuart, dated "Leven, Fifeshire, 21st July, 1888," begins:—"I am now writing at a very early hour opposite the hall which I rented in 1837, and where I opened a school with one scholar—the only one for six weeks. I traced her out last night, and hope to see her after breakfast. I spent two hours with the banker of the place, another pupil, and through him I traced many of the scholars of that distant day." In a subsequent letter he wrote, "I have seen my first scholar, now a maiden of 57 years. I found a few old friends, with whom I had pleasant talk of long, long ago."
