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TEACHING WELL

What does it mean to teach well? In short, it means a willingness to do anything that helps students learn. Teaching Well investigates the fundamental principle of what teaching effectively entails by exploring the key dynamics of a learning-centered classroom. Based on interviews with renowned scholar Stephen D. Brookfield, this book covers a wide range of topics – such as classroom democratization, critical thinking and reflection, race and power, and more. Each chapter is framed by key questions meant to hone teachers’ crafts and encourage important conversations. Further, this engaging book examines the crucial steps of bringing educators’ identities and backgrounds into practice by soliciting and responding to student feedback, negotiating power dynamics and the ways institutional constraints, students, and self-concepts can sabotage efforts. A timely text, Teaching Well is the ideal companion for all college and university educators and experienced practitioners across the globe who continue to reflect critically about their teaching practice.

Stephen D. Brookfield is Distinguished Scholar at Antioch University, Adjunct Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Professor Emeritus at the University of St. Thomas, USA.

Jürgen Rudolph is Co-Editor in Chief of Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching and Director of Research at Kaplan Singapore.

Shannon Tan is Journal Manager of Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching and Research Executive at Kaplan Singapore.

Teaching Well

Understanding Key Dynamics of Learning-Centered Classrooms

Stephen D. Brookfield, Jürgen Rudolph, and Shannon Tan

Designed cover image: © Getty Images

First published 2024 by Routledge

605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Taylor & Francis

The right of Stephen D. Brookfield, Jürgen Rudolph, and Shannon Tan to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

ISBN: 978-1-642-67472-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-642-67473-6 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-44746-7 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003447467

Typeset in Galliard Pro By codeMantra

12 How do we teach well as leaders?

13 How do we learn and grow as teachers over a career?

Preface

Every teacher worth their salt wants to do good work. Put another way, committed teachers strive to teach well. Our book investigates the fundamental dynamic of what teaching well entails and how to do it. It does so by exploring what we regard as the key dynamics of a learning-centered classroom. Each chapter is framed by a key question, many of which have been posed repeatedly to Stephen by participants in the hundreds of teacher development workshops he has conducted. We begin by asking what it means to teach well. As the book proceeds, we examine the key dynamics of bringing our identities and backgrounds into our practice, soliciting and responding to student feedback, negotiating power dynamics and the ways institutional constraints, students, and our own self-concepts can sabotage our efforts. We explore the characteristics central to pedagogies of critical thinking, discussion, and critical reflection, and consider how classrooms can be democratized. Projects dear to us are how to teach race, how learning informs leadership, and how to maximize the power of modeling. The book ends with a consideration of the different kinds of learning we need to enable in order to teach well over the course of our careers.

Our book traces its origins back to when Jürgen was reviewing the second edition of Becoming a critically reflective teacher (Brookfield, 2017; Rudolph, 2019) and asked Stephen for an interview for the Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching (Brookfield et al., 2019). Stephen was such a wonderful person to interview that Jürgen developed the idée fixe to do a book with him along with Jürgen’s colleague Shannon. So the questions Stephen responds to come from a middle-aged German educator and journal editor who has spent more than half of his life in Singapore (Jürgen) as well as a Singaporean Chinese 20-something early career researcher (Shannon). The content and form of the book have gone through a few iterations. It started off as a book of interview questions that aimed to traverse Stephen’s intellectual biography.

This book is based on interviews with Stephen on a wide range of topics related to the theme of teaching well. The questions were jointly prepared

by Jürgen and Shannon, and 14 interviews were conducted over a period of 6 months that lasted a total of around 30 hours, producing some 207,000 words. These interviews form the basis of the text in front of you, although they’ve gone through multiple rounds of editing. The tone we aspire to is personal and highly accessible and we want this book to connect with readers viscerally and emotionally. So we quote many practical examples from and talk concretely and specifically about the exercises and activities Stephen’s developed to negotiate common teaching dynamics. And the conversational format of this book hopefully makes for an enjoyable read, with Stephen frequently addressing the reader directly via the frequent use of ‘you’ and related pronouns.

Stephen’s output on the topic of teaching well is highly prolific involving 20 books and 100 journal articles and book chapters. We aspire to forge something new from his multiple strands of his work and update it to reflect the (hopefully) post-pandemic world of 2023 in which we see a dramatic rise in online learning and teaching. Blended learning (that is, various mixtures of face-to-face teaching, asynchronous and synchronous online learning) will likely be the ‘new normal’ in many higher education institutions around the globe. We need to adapt to the e-learning environment and think less as a teacher, and more as an instructional designer trying to think through how to help students learn. We recognize that online learning provides students with various advantages, including having more time to process the information on their own, fewer groupthink pressures, greater privacy, and less of a need to perform the ‘good student’ role by attentively sitting in the front row and making eye contact with the teacher. Throughout the book, we discuss the online teaching and learning experience and provide useful practical advice.

Our book is meant to be a practical document for teachers around the world interested in honing their craft. Whilst much of Stephen’s previous writings were specifically aimed at North American and other Western educators, our book discusses the importance of our national, cultural, and institutional contexts. For instance, it may be very difficult for students who’ve been socialized in a Confucian culture to critique their teachers’ work. Doing that will require trust and time that Western educational institutions typically do not allow. Many higher education teachers and leaders are overworked and frustrated by the systemic constraints under which they operate, so we strive to provide a glimmer of hope on those difficult days we encounter confusion and demoralization.

What does it mean to teach well? In short, being willing to do anything that helps students learn. If an activity or approach advances our students’ learning then, whatever it is, it must be considered as good teaching. But in order to know what exercises or actions advance students learning, we need to conduct continuous classroom inquiry. So a lot of our book explores

how to do that via social media tools such as Sli.do and devices such as the Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ) and by consulting colleagues, reflecting on our autobiographies, and drawing on relevant theory (see Chapter 10).

Teaching well entails varying our teaching modalities depending on what we learn about the particular contexts in which we’re working. Depending on how well we understand a context and the pedagogical purpose we have in mind, multiple modalities are available to us. Which we choose to use depends on what we judge is best for our students’ learning. The only way to improve our teaching is by experimenting and taking calculated risks, while constantly receiving student (and ideally peer) feedback through our ongoing classroom research. So we see teaching as a continuous process of failing well, in which our growing appreciation of complexity is matched by a willingness to be more and more open to different approaches.

Audience

Our book is for all teachers who continue to reflect critically about their practice. Our primary target audience is college and university teachers at all levels across the globe. We hope it’ll be useful to both beginning college teachers and experienced practitioners alike. The book will also be interesting to adult educators, curriculum developers, policymakers, upper-level high school teachers, and practitioners in staff development and training.

Overview of the Contents

Our book is organized around 13 major questions:

1 What does it mean to teach well?

2 How do our experiences as students frame our teaching?

3 How do we do learning-centered teaching?

4 How do we deal with classroom and self-sabotage?

5 How does power show up in classrooms?

6 How do we democratize classrooms?

7 How can we promote good discussion?

8 How do we get students to think more critically?

9 How do we teach about race?

10 How can we become critically reflective teachers?

11 How can we enact the power of modeling?

12 How do we teach well as leaders?

13 How do we learn and grow as teachers over a career?

The opening chapter examines what it looks, sounds, and feels like to teach well. We argue that good teaching has precious little to do with the unrealistic imagery glorifying heroic teachers that we see propelled by popular media. We discuss how we can teach well when the contexts in which we work are constantly changing and what we need to know about learning and teaching to be effective instructors. We observe that all education is inherently ideological and that the ubiquitous metrification that we find in contemporary higher education institutions may not be helpful in measuring what a good teacher is. Psychologist Paul Watzlawick stated that ‘one cannot not communicate’ (Watzlawick et al., 1967) and we are tempted to say that ‘one cannot not teach.’ Even when we do nothing and try to be a fly on the wall, students still assign all kinds of meanings to our inaction.

Chapter 2 focuses on how our own experiences as students frame our pedagogy as teachers. Good teachers are made, not born. To varying extents, we are all shaped by our experiences in school and our student memories of good and bad teachers. What we’ve experienced as the best and worst learning environments, shapes how we construct and enact our own teaching. For example, we’ll probably try not to reproduce the behaviors of the poor teachers that we encountered during our own studies.

In the third chapter, we explore how to engage in learning-centered teaching; that is, teaching in a way that’s grounded in, and responsive to, the dynamics of learning occurring in the classroom. In response to discovering different experiences, preferences, styles, and dispositions in any student group, we recommend the use of multiple instruction modalities, specifically the rule of three; using at least three modalities in a session. We consider how building a trustful relationship with our students helps establish our credibility and aids in creating community. Central to this dynamic is the public use of anonymous student feedback (via classroom assessment, social media, CIQs, and teaching evaluations), engaging in appropriate selfdisclosure, and explaining our teaching rationale.

Central to any effort to teach well is moving learners out of their comfort zones. But, as we point out in Chapter 4, learners being challenged to develop new skills or consider difficult new information often deny their relevance and attempt to sabotage the teacher’s practices. This entails a range of behaviors, including silence, constantly interrupting and raising objections, and bullying. It also includes diversionary tactics such as repressive tolerance where a supposedly respectful tolerance of all viewpoints conceals an unwillingness to take them seriously (Marcuse, 1969b). We discuss when sabotage is justified, and how to reduce the amount of willful sabotage that occurs.

Impostorship is a self-sabotaging behavior, which consists of negative self-talk about our supposed inadequacies or the unrealistic nature of our quest to become a good teacher. It’s a widespread phenomenon that can be

Preface xi

countered via team teaching and continuous classroom research. We also talk about how we can unwittingly commit cultural suicide when we lose connection to those around us because we’re so focused on the desirability of change. In our messianic zeal to propose new perspectives to our colleagues, we are in danger of losing our connection with them. All teachers experience times of self-doubt when our confidence is challenged. We need to see such moments of uncertainty as not ones of individual idiosyncratic failure but a shared reality that happens to all of us.

Chapter 5 is about how power shows up in the classroom and how it is never a power-free zone. Power is inherently complex. For example, moving chairs in a circle in the classroom is often intended as a democratizing exercise, but can be experienced as a heightened form of surveillance. Every learning environment contains student-to-student, student-to-teacher, and team-teaching power dynamics that need to be understood and negotiated. We propose that powerful teaching focuses on helping everyone involved understand how power dynamics operate in their setting and on supporting learners in planning their own empowerment. It also requires us to be fully transparent about what we do. The chapter explores how to know if a teacher is exercising power in an ethical, productive, and responsible manner and it discusses various influences on our conceptual understanding of power. We consider some disheartening similarities between prisons and schools, the metaphor of the panopticon, and the continued relevance of biopower during the Covid-19 pandemic. Finally, we interrogate the democratic practice of discussion groups, despite Stephen’s personal preference for that modality.

The sixth chapter discusses how we can democratize our classrooms. Although students may legitimately complain that ignoring their wishes is undemocratic, we critique the notion of democracy-as-majority-rule. Instead, we propose that democracy constitutes a continuing conversation approach about the use of available resources in which students are involved. The democratic classroom includes multiple voices and perspectives, recognizes learners as decision-makers, and exhibits a responsible use of teacher power. However, it’s important to note that democracy is always a partially functioning ideal that’s always being pursued, but never fully realized.

Using discussion is one of the ways teachers claim to be progressive, democratic, and learning-centered. In Chapter 7, we explore the balance between keeping discussions free and open, but at the same time using structured protocols. We discuss how to avoid ‘counterfeit’ discussions; that is, ones that look open to, and welcoming of all perspectives, but are subtly controlled by teachers or other group members. We explore several creative adaptations of discussions such as the Circle of Voices, Chalk Talk, the Drawing Discussion exercise, and Bohmian Dialogue. We also examine the importance of creating silent, reflective interludes in the midst of

conversation and how we should not misconstrue silence or reluctance to speak as a sign that we have failed as a facilitator.

The eighth chapter investigates how we can get our students to think more critically. There is endless miscommunication around this concept because it is often insufficiently disclosed that we come from five different traditions of critical thinking: (1) analytic philosophy and logic, (2) the hypothetico-deductive method of the natural sciences, (3) pragmatism, (4) psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, and (5) critical theory. We posit that these approaches to critical thinking are not mutually exclusive and that we can use all of them as we try to take informed action. We discuss Stephen’s experiences with clinical depression and how patriarchy may prevent men from seeking professional assistance, thus providing an opportunity for modeling critical thinking in dealing with medical conditions. We also explore critical reading and critical writing. Critical thinking is not a ‘doubting game,’ and the assumption that it’s only conducted through rational analysis neglects its important emotional aspects. We look at the tension between Eurocentric models of critical thinking and collectivist perspectives such as Confucianism and how considering cultural aspects leads us to adapt our teaching modalities accordingly.

Chapter 9 is about one of the most complex pedagogic projects, teaching about race. Doing this well requires us to shift our notions of what counts as success. We build on Stephen’s work (Sheared et al., 2010; Brookfield & Associates, 2019; Brookfield & Hess, 2021) to examine how teaching race is an emotional and political project. We discuss how we all grow up internalizing racial stereotypes but how we can nonetheless attempt to develop an antiracist identity. We pay special attention to how the development of such an identity is in the self-interest of White people. We clarify key concepts like racism, White supremacy, and intersectionality, and discuss how critical race theory has been marginalized in U.S. public education and training.

Racism in U.S. higher education is evident not just in pedagogy, but in admissions policies, disciplinary guidelines, curriculum development, hiring patterns, and numerous other institutional practices. We show how public relations efforts paint a counter-factual, inclusive, and equitable picture of universities as a rainbow coalition of different racial identities. For teachers, we outline a series of sequenced stages to bring students into discussions where racial identity is foregrounded, particularly in predominantly White institutions. White teachers need to understand the limitations of a ‘colorblind’ perspective and the dangers of White ‘savior-ism.’ Finally, we explore the design of antiracist workshops and how Whites can be allies in antiracist movements or projects.

Chapter 10 discusses how we can become critically reflective teachers. Critical reflection and critical thinking (see Chapter 8) are often used interchangeably. Whilst both share core processes, critical reflection focuses on

Preface xiii

using four lenses to clarify and check the assumptions informing our teaching: the lens of students’ eyes, the lens of one’s autobiography as a learner and teacher, the lens of colleagues’ perceptions, and the lens of theory. Teaching well is helped immeasurably when we’re engaged in a constant process of examining our pedagogic assumptions and seeing our practice through multiple lenses.

Critical reflection improves teaching by grounding it in an accurate sense of what we’re dealing with and gives us greater confidence that our actions are having the effects we intend. We explain its importance to emotional health and the way that good teachers are empathetic with their learners’ emotions. And we acknowledge how teaching in a critically reflective key means we are constantly open to change and experimentation. It’s hard to go on automatic pilot when you’re aware of the complexities you’re dealing with from class to class, student to student, and topic to topic.

Chapter 11 develops the theme of how we can enact the power of modeling. Modeling what we want students to learn is crucial, particularly when learning entails any degree of risk. It sets a tone for our interactions, clarifies our rationale, and provides scaffolding for students entering into new learning territory. It’s important that we deliberately model specific dispositions, skills, or cognitive actions before we ask our students to engage in those particular activities. We discuss the elements of good modeling – clarity, explicitness, and transparency – and provide examples while team-teaching and also while teaching solo. We then explore modeling across four different contexts: working as a teacher, in staff development settings, in leadership roles, and in community or political involvements. We also review how to model democratic talk and reemphasize the usefulness of anonymous backchannels for judging how well modeling is working.

The penultimate chapter (Chapter 12) shifts the focus to teachers as leaders and explores how we can teach well, even when we’re in leadership roles. Many teachers eventually move into leadership positions that take them outside of the classroom. In so doing, they often forget the insights around how to foster learning that they’ve developed in the classroom. Yet, getting colleagues to think critically, encouraging them to be open to new perspectives, and guiding them through change, all involve the same fundamental dynamics we negotiate as teachers working to introduce students to new learning. Whilst there are many models of leadership, we focus mostly on what we call ‘learning leadership’ in which a prime responsibility is to help others learn, while we also constantly learn about the practice of leadership. This kind of leadership can be exercised from below, behind, and among, as seen in the different leadership tasks we examine. In particular, we emphasize three tasks: learning how to question ourselves and others, learning how to sustain hope in the face of struggle, and learning how to create community.

The final chapter (Chapter 13) considers how we learn and grow as teachers as we progress through our careers. In this journey of becoming good teachers, the four lenses of critical reflection (see Chapter 10) are key. We need to learn by doing and continue to fail well. Although we acknowledge the importance of learning new pedagogic skills and approaches, what are just as crucial are political, ontological, somatic, and emotional learning. Political learning helps us work within constraining structures and negotiate institutional barriers. Ontological learning teaches us about the essentially uncontrollable nature of the world of the classroom. Somatic learning makes us aware of what our bodily reactions teach us about stress and pleasure and how to conserve our bodily energy. And emotional learning helps us negotiate the emotional roller coaster that represents a teacher’s life while still doing good work.

As there is no necessary relationship between being a content expert and being able to teach that knowledge, both need honing. We view how we teach as being equally important as what we teach. Finally, we emphasize the importance of context. It’s important to resist the temptation to universalize experiences so we encourage you to modify and tweak any of the advice given in our book. After all, each classroom is its own universe and teaching well is NOT following the instructions that a book like this gives, but in researching your students’ experiences and doing whatever will help them learn.

Acknowledgments

Stephen: I’d like to thank Jürgen and Shannon for suggesting this book, staying up well into the Singapore early mornings to talk to me, and for asking such wonderful questions. It was a pleasure to talk to you both and respond to your carefully crafted queries and challenges. I’d also like to thank David Brightman for his friendship, support, and guidance over the years. Higher and adult education has no greater champion than David and his contributions in these areas have been immeasurable.

Jürgen: I’d like to thank Stephen for amazing me by agreeing to this project and being a wonderful interviewee and the lead author of our book. It feels funny that I’ve never met Stephen in person, but that I nonetheless feel very closely connected to him – a result of partially sharing similar experiences, talking to him for thirty hours via Zoom, reading thousands of pages of his work, and going through earlier versions of the text of this book multiple times. My profuse thanks are also due to my cherished colleague and co-author Shannon for preparing the interview questions and doing uncounted edits together with me, and co-authoring the book. I lovingly commemorate my late mom, who instilled in me a love of reading in my formative years, and my heartfelt thanks also go to my late dad, who supported me unquestioningly during my meandering studies of the humanities and social sciences in the last century. Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the wonderful emotional support of my beloved wife Clara.

Shannon: I’d like to thank both Stephen and Jürgen for inviting me to this fabulous project and giving me an eye-opening learning experience. Working with both esteemed co-authors has been an extraordinarily surreal and enriching journey. My profuse thanks to Jürgen for providing ample support and advice throughout my studies and budding career. I would also like to thank my beloved mother, who nourished my love of reading and thirst for knowledge, and finally, my family (mum, dad, and brother), who supported me during my most challenging times.

xvi Acknowledgments

Jürgen and Shannon: We are very grateful to our Turkish friend Begüm Burak for capably doing the bulk of the transcriptions of our interviews, and she also was a great help in going through earlier drafts of this text. We also benefited greatly from other wonderful friends who read various chapters or a complete draft of the main text: Anna Mihaylov, Nigel Starck (both in Australia), Eunice Tan, Mohamed Fadhil, Nelson Ang (all in Singapore), and Margarita Kefalaki (Greece). We thank Sam Choon Yin for his deeplyappreciated support of our research work. We are also incredibly grateful to David Brightman for his expert advice during the transformation of our idea into a manuscript (while our book was still with Stylus) and to Routledge’s Heather Jarrow and Marielena Zajac for their wonderful professional and speedy editorial advice.

1 What does it mean to teach well?

In this opening chapter, we establish what it means to teach well by identifying what it looks, sounds, and feels like. We discuss how we judge that good teaching is happening and consider which qualities make the best teachers. We observe that all education is ideologically motivated and that metrification does not measure what a good teacher is. A central assertion is that depending on the context, a plethora of teaching approaches are appropriate. The concept of ‘teaching well’ is never static and changes with what we learn about students’ experiences. This should liberate teachers to make mistakes and experiment as they reflect critically on their decisions and actions. We finish by examining what teachers need to know about learning and teaching to be effective instructors.

What does teaching well look, sound, and feel like?

In this section, we explore the importance of understanding the myriad interactions that take place within the classroom, and we challenge the unrealistic imagery in popular media that glorifies heroic, charismatic teachers.

Jürgen: In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, you wrote that throughout your career, you’ve had a specific image of a good class.

It’s one in which everybody says something, there are no awkward silences, students ask provocative and pertinent questions, and there are multiple nonverbal indications of student engagement… This unrealistic and naive image is… far removed from what actually happens in most of my classes.

(Brookfield, 2017, p. 67)

What does it look like to teach well?

What does it mean to teach well?

Stephen: First, it looks like the attempt to find out how students are experiencing their learning. So teaching well means using different approaches to gathering as much information as we can about the ways that different students respond to the activities and assignments we arrange. Sometimes we ask the class directly to tell us what exercises they find most helpful or inhibiting. Maybe we use a classroom research tool such as the one-minute paper to gauge where they are in their understanding. Or we ask them to complete a Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ) form once a week. Then again, perhaps we use social media platforms such as backchannelchat.com or Sli.do to gather in-the-moment student responses to the impact of our actions.

When we do this kind of classroom research, it invariably suggests a second observable characteristic of teaching well; adopting varying pedagogic modalities. Someone who’s teaching well constantly switches activities and exercises and doesn’t assume that one instructional modality works for everyone in a class or professional development workshop. Teaching is such a complex activity that we must always be open to different approaches and possibilities.

Of course using multiple formats is difficult to do, given that we tend to teach from who we are. For example, I’m an introvert, so the way that I teach discussion is very much based on an introvert’s perspective. I’ve also struggled with learning, so the way that I teach is based partly on avoiding negative experiences that I’ve had in the past. One thing good teachers try to develop is becoming comfortable with broadening their repertoire so they have the capacity to try different things. I like to follow the rule of three; I want every instructional interaction I oversee to have at least three different modalities, rhythms, or activities to engage learners.

Teaching well also looks like teachers conveying what they believe it’s important for students to know. If you’re ever in a situation in which you’re teaching something that you don’t really feel convinced is that necessary to know or do, then it’s difficult to look like you’re committed to your process and students will quickly pick up that sense of irrelevance. Convincing people about the importance of learning is enacted in different ways. It’s not using communicative rhetorical tricks – punching the air, hitting the desk, interspersing low whispers with loud proclamations. You see instead in how teachers take great care to seek out students’ questions, listen to them very carefully, and respond thoughtfully. It’s also seen in the degree of individualized evaluation you give. From the students’ perspective, what marks out a really good, committed teacher is how much time they spend on a student’s work and communicate to them what they find meritorious about it and what needs improvement. These are all ways you show students that you want them to understand properly whatever it is that you’re trying to teach.

When you teach well you also model for students your own commitment to being an active and engaged learner. You show them how you’re open to new ways of thinking and acting and to challenging some assumptions you’ve always felt were self-evidently true. To be effective, this modeling needs to be very explicit and public, as when you tell students, ‘what I’m trying to do now is to think critically about this particular assertion or this particular practice’ and then conduct an assumptions inventory, or refer to something on the CIQ that challenges you, or take a question off the anonymous Sli.do feed you’ve created for that session (see Chapter 11).

Finally, teaching well looks like the encouragement of community in the classroom. By that I mean that teachers find ways for students to share the learning that’s happening. They arrange group projects and team presentations. They put students in contact with each other by sharing information (if students approve) and arranging online forums. They make sure that classroom breaks allow time for students to get to know each other. That helps them compare amongst themselves how they’re experiencing learning a new piece of content or developing a new skill or disposition. Using a platform such as Sli.do allows students to share the problems they’re having and to help each other out by giving tips based on their own experiences. And teachers also give regular feedback on how they feel things are going and what they’re observing so that the experience of learning and teaching becomes community property (Shulman, 1993).

Shannon: How does it sound to teach well? What do our ears register that convinces us that things are going reasonably well?

Stephen: The sound that I hear is alternately conversational and silent, with both elements regarded as equally important. There’s a deliberate effort not to privilege speech as the sole indicator that learning is occurring. In both the student and teaching periods of my life, I’ve often fallen into the trap of assuming that the best learners were those who could express ideas elegantly, drop appropriate citations, and only give relevant examples. I assumed that their speech represented their superior intelligence. That always bothered me because, as an introvert, I don’t like to speak in class, at least not until I feel comfortable. I stay silent, observe, and do a lot of mulling over new information. This may be one reason I was viewed as a fairly mediocre student all through my college and university days.

By way of contrast, teaching well sounds like a classroom in which silence is valued and affirmed as an important rhythm of learning. The room is often quiet as people jot things down, do free writing, and think about responses to questions before discussing them. Good teachers are very careful not to pose a question and then start to answer it when a response is not

What does it mean to teach well?

immediately forthcoming. Similarly, when teachers are asked a question they don’t immediately spring into articulate, informed speech. Instead, they say: ‘that’s a really good question; I need a minute or two to think about this so let me pause a moment while I consider it’ and then take the time to do that. It’s important to show publicly that you’re comfortable being silent in front of students.

Another sound of teaching well is hearing questions being raised by the students, particularly if they are of good quality. So questions that identify potential contradictions, bring in relevant issues that aren’t being considered at that point, or point out unjustified inferential leaps. These kinds of questions demonstrate that students are moving forward. They’re very different for constant requests for clarification asking the teacher to explain something a second time, or to give a different example that’s more understandable. Of course, those are important and necessary questions particularly when students are struggling to understand foundational content.

The sound of the teacher providing appropriate autobiographical disclosure is also something I listen for. As you introduce students to a new subject matter, it’s often important to bring in your own personal experiences as a learner. In surveys that I’ve conducted over the years, one of the most consistent findings that emerge is how helpful students find it when I make an appropriate autobiographical disclosure about my own experience of learning the content we’re studying. My disclosures are intended to illuminate the problem the students are dealing with and to get them to the next point in their understanding or skill acquisition.

There’s a balance in the sound of whose voices take up the air when you’re teaching well. The teacher’s voice doesn’t dominate to the exclusion of others. There’s plenty of student voices in the mix as students pay attention to each other, ask each other questions and encourage different people to speak. When students do that, it’s an aural indicator that a collective impulse is in play where people are invested in the importance of each other’s learning.

Teaching well also involves the sound of a particular kind of speech from the educator. This is when teachers constantly talk about why they are doing what they’re doing. They explain how an activity fits into the overall flow and development of students’ learning over the semester and reference how a particular activity has worked well in the past. According to direct student testimony, teachers can hardly overdo the sound of explanation and transparency. So creating a window into your own decision-making and justifying why you’re doing something at a particular point is a frequent form of teacher talk.

Finally, teaching well includes the sound of teachers inviting critique not only of their actions and assertions, but also of the body of knowledge or the conceptualization of what a best practice looks like. If developing critical

What does it mean to teach well? 5

thinking is an important educational aim, then it must start with the teacher modeling what that entails. Of course, this sound tends to be developmental. If learners are at a novice level of understanding, it’s hard to critique ideas and practices until they’ve understood the grammar of the subject; that is, the basic foundational building blocks of knowledge, and the standards used in the discipline to decide if a concept, hypothesis, theory, or piece of research is legitimate. If you’re learning something for the first time, it’s difficult to critique those things. But as students go further into the topic, we should hear the sound of critique emerging.

Shannon: How does it feel to teach well?

Stephen: I feel that I’m teaching well when I have confidence that learners are developing the skills, knowledge, understanding, and dispositions I’m hoping to help them acquire. Of course, I can only really feel this way if I have student data that this is actually happening. When I leave a class and say to myself, ‘wow, I was really good today – engaged, in the moment and really on,’ I always mistrust that internal dialogue. There’s no necessary correlation between feeling that way and students actually moving forward. When I began teaching in 1970, I read Jennifer Rogers (2007) quote a lecturer who excitedly declared to the class at the end of the lecture that it was the first time he’d really understood the topic of his talk. As she pointed out, his excitement was completely without reference to anything that had happened to the learners in the class.

Jürgen: We are now transitioning from the senses (looks, sounds, and feelings) to cognition and thought. How can we know and judge that good teaching is happening?

Stephen: The prime indicator, our axiomatic starting point, has to be information from students. That’s the essence of a learner-centered approach. You judge whether good teaching is happening based on the information you gather from students about how they are experiencing what they’re learning. A willingness to find ways to check in with students about this is the chief thing I look out for when doing teacher evaluations. You can develop pedagogic skills and techniques, but the most important thing is how assiduously and consistently you try to get information about what’s happening in the classroom or workshop. These can be verbal check-ins where you ask ‘how are things going?’ However, these are often of limited utility because of the power dynamics at play.

What does it mean to teach well?

Because of a lack of trust and familiarity, par ticipants are rarely at a point where they want to give you information that’s in any way critical. A student will be wondering about possible penalties for their honesty.

This is why it’s so crucial to do check-ins through social media backchannels. That has been a fundamental shift in my teaching in the digital age and is something I do in all my face-to-face classes as well as online. There are so many tools to use through which I can get anonymous data from students about what’s going on. Right now, I use a platform called Sli.do to pose open-ended questions to the class such as: ‘What question is at the forefront of your mind about this?,’ ‘What would be any helpful information that I can provide that would enhance your understanding of the topic?,’ ‘What is hardest to understand about this?,’ ‘What’s the most important point that we’ve considered in the last half an hour?,’ and so on. I ask the students questions like this and provide a 90-second silent period for them to think and respond.

Sli.do is a completely anonymous platform so there’s no risk to students that their comment will be attributed to them. I project the responses on the screen in the classroom so that the whole group, as well as the educator, sees the different ways people are experiencing the same class or workshop. In doing this, it sometimes becomes clear that participants are experiencing the event very differently. There are various concerns expressed, different levels of satisfaction that are apparent, and different questions that need addressing. As I respond to these, I talk about what students’ postings mean for the activities we do next in the class, such as how I’m going to structure a discussion or assign an individual reflective exercise, or why I want to do a mini-presentation or lecture. That’s how you judge that good teaching is happening; by constantly checking in with students and doing a lot of formative evaluation.

Doing these kind of check-ins has meant that I’ve learned constantly to alternate the different instructional modalities I employ. As a teacher, I can’t just do what I personally like doing and use whatever approaches fit my personality. For example, I love to take questions and I can spend a long time in conversation with two or three students who are asking what I think are very interesting and provocative questions. When this happens, I come alive with the intellectual effort of coming up with a good response and I answer them in a way I like thinking ‘things are going REALLY well.’ But then I’ll pose a question via Sli.do about the class and I find out that the majority of the class is bored with the questioning because they consider the questions that have been posed to be irrelevant or uninteresting. So while my dialogue with only a few students animates me, the rest of class can be silent onlookers who don’t feel involved with the exchange.

Who are the best teachers?

In our discussion of who the best teachers are, we refer to the usefulness of teachers’ own struggles during their learning for their own teaching practice, a theme that is elaborated on in Chapter 2. We also emphasize the power of peer teaching and the advantage of a teacher’s familiarity with the problems their participants are facing.

Jürgen: You wrote: “[T]he best teachers are probably those who’ve achieved their skill mastery, knowledge, and intellectual fluidity only after periods of struggle and anxiety” (Brookfield, 2017, p. 165). Elsewhere, you cite Myles Horton (1976, p. 13) that the “best teachers of poor people are the poor people themselves. The best teachers about Black problems are the Black people. The best teachers about Appalachian problems are Appalachians, and so on.” In your view, would these two quotes encapsulate who the best teachers are?

Stephen: The first quote about good teachers having struggled as learners was influenced by my own experiences as a learner who consistently struggled in school. I was always regarded as mediocre and usually in the bottom half of whatever class that I was in. I struggled to take examinations and have a history of failing them because of suffering from chronic anxiety. It does not matter how long I spend preparing for a closed-book exam; when the examination begins, it feels like my brain empties of all the knowledge that I have acquired, and I panic and freeze. In a larger sense, I’ve always felt like an impostor in academe and I always proclaim my identity as a practitioner, not as a theorist or intellectual. I’m convinced that the permanently feeling out of place in an educational context comes from that student experience of never being regarded as talented or having much ability and not receiving much affirmation from teachers.

But the benefit of these experiences as a student is that they help me work very well with learners who are struggling, who feel like the rest of the class is moving far beyond them, and that everybody else is ‘getting it’ while they are stuck at ground zero. Those students are my kind of students because I know how they feel. I don’t dismiss their anxiety and say, ‘just keep practicing and you’ll get it.’ Only a teacher who has not struggled with anxiety around learning would say something like that. I’m in the fortunate position of being fully immersed in the visceral and emotional experience of failure that a lot of students have. Those experiences inform the way that I operate and have been enormously helpful to me.

8 What does it mean to teach well?

The second quote from Myles Horton about people being their own best teachers also serves as a model for me. This approach is premised on an assumption very common in adult education that when people come into the room they are not empty vessels. In contrast, they bring a lot of knowledge and some incredibly rich experiences. Even though all those things might not seem initially to be connected to the particular topic of the class, there are nonetheless ways in which those experiences can be brought in to inform people’s current learning.

This usually happens when people start to talk with each other and create connections between what they’re learning and their past experiences. Thirty years of collecting student data through a variety of techniques demonstrates that the best moments that help people move their learning along happen in well-constructed small groups. When they engage in a small group exercise that focuses on how well they interpret or apply information, they report that this is the most helpful of all their learning activities.

Is all education ideological?

All education is inherently normative. This is due to the fact that the goals set as learning objectives all come from someone’s judgment that learning these things is important, beneficial, and necessary. There are things that teachers want students to learn and things that they don’t want them to learn. All academic disciplines have their own canon that are influenced to different degrees by government policies, cultural norms, or industry interests. How we teach is also a political issue. Do the modalities we use lean toward an authoritarian or a democratic teaching style?

Shannon: Is all education inherently ideological or normative?

Stephen: I do believe that education is inherently normative, as it is always grounded in an idea of what characteristics an educated person should exhibit, of the direction in which we’re taking people.

If you don’t have that normative commitment to the idea that it would be beneficial for people to know whatever you’re teaching, then why are you in the game? For example, I don’t want to teach in a way that helps students stop challenging assumptions or that makes them feel confident that they don’t ever need to look at the world in a different way. I don’t want to help them feel that the way that they interpret and experience the world, or how they act on it, never needs examining. I obviously don’t want – although sometimes I do this inadvertently – to teach in ways that enact and support certain dominant ideologies like White supremacy, racism, or misogyny.

Although I have to acknowledge that my own socialization and the structures I teach within often lead me in that direction.

My theory behind my approach to teaching is drawn from a critical theory framework that’s infused with American pragmatism. In this regard, I have learned a great deal from Cornel West’s (2002) engagement with both these traditions. Critical theory posits that education is always ideological, in the sense that it always serves certain ends and supports certain interests that are defined by the dominant group in society. Teachers sometimes claim that they teach in an area that is not ideological because it is unconnected to politics, culture, or society. So, for example, if you teach in the STEM disciplines, you may deal with the world of natural phenomena and claim it’s apolitical. Yet we can see today how clearly STEM disciplines are favored and funded disproportionately over the arts and humanities in grants and research funding.

Also, in every field, whether it’s gender studies or astrophysics, there is always a canon of legitimate knowledge. Where does it come from? Who are considered as experts? Who are revered in the field as founding fathers or mothers? Who are the gatekeepers? Who edits the encyclopedias that are regarded as the public face of our discipline? Who is on the editorial boards of journals? Who in a foundation decides that certain grants will go to certain people? What projects get funded in STEM disciplines? Who gets lots of outside support from the pharmaceutical industry, or from the military?

The way in which classes are taught is also ideological. You may teach an apparently completely neutral subject matter, but you are still dealing with other human beings according to an image you hold of how learning should happen. Is your image one that allows participants to move to exercising a measure of control? How much do you emphasize the complete authority of the teacher’s words or the text that is the official course textbook?

There are always social interactions and relationships at the heart of teaching, whether the discipline is anatomy, calculus, or biochemistry. Even if you’re lecturing in an auditorium with 250 or 500 people, you can still incorporate social media to demonstrate your responsiveness and attempt to find out how students are experiencing things. If you do any small group work, how do you design your validated formats? How do you interact with students? Do you try and get a sense of what students are learning and how they’re experiencing the class? Do you develop the capacity for students to ask questions by encouraging and rewarding that behavior? Do you try and involve students whenever you can? Do you show that you take their concerns seriously? Are you alert to power dynamics around race, class, culture, gender, ability, and identity? All these questions that on the surface deal with classroom ‘management’ are ultimately ideological.

The importance of good teachers

The role of the teacher is critically important. In the best case, teachers provide a conducive learning environment. In the worst case, they demoralize their students. Even when teachers do nothing in the classroom, they are still keenly observed by their students and thus always influencing what’s happening.

Jürgen: Why are good teaching and good teachers important?

Stephen: In adult education, I was brought up in a tradition and time that strongly valued non-directive facilitation and that de-emphasized the importance of the teacher. I did my doctoral work around independent, self-directed adult learning. Consequently, at the beginning of my career, I had this idea that good teachers get out of the way of learners’ intentions and just let students do what they feel is most useful to them. That’s why for the first 20 years of my career I used the term ‘facilitator’ much more than teacher.

I still feel that in some situations that approach is entirely appropriate, but it’s very far from the sum total of the story. Once I began researching students’ experiences of learning, I brought the word ‘teacher’ into my vocabulary much more frequently. This was because students told me that teachers’ choices, actions, decisions all fundamentally enhance and help their learning. Students watch us and look to us for leadership and direction. For them, a teacher is crucial in enhancing or destroying motivation for learning, in encouraging or demoralizing them, in making them feel like their knowledge is important or that they’re not respected. Your presence is never immaterial or insignificant. Even if you’re silent and not intervening, learners register that fact and it has meaning and significance for them. If you choose not to jump into a discussion, that’s a directive choice because it’s made on the understanding that not participating at a particular moment will enhance student understanding. That’s why education is always directive. Participants constantly watch you for cues as to how you’re responding about whether or not you think students are behaving appropriately (see Chapter 5).

Are all teaching approaches appropriate, depending on the context?

Shannon: In Radicalizing learning, you wrote: “All teaching approaches are appropriate depending on context” (Brookfield & Holst, 2011, p. 126). It would appear that there’s no magical technique

What does it mean to teach well? 11 for good teaching, and context is of paramount importance. Is that your understanding?

Stephen: In the third edition of The skillful teacher (Brookfield, 2015), I added a core assumption to what skillful teaching is all about, namely that context changes everything. That’s because even though I’ve been teaching some of my courses for over three decades, each class represents a completely new configuration of circumstances. I never get bored because I never know what’s going to happen. I never know what questions and responses are going to come up through the social media backchannels, what issues will be raised publicly in class, or what dynamics will be expressed in the Critical Incident Questionnaires (CIQ).

The CIQ is an anonymous feedback form that asks five standard questions: at what moment in class did you feel most engaged with what was happening? At what moment in class were you most distanced from what was happening? What action that anyone (teacher or student) took did you find most helpful? What action that anyone took did you find most puzzling? What about the class surprised you the most? (This could be about your own reactions to what went on, something that someone did, or anything else that occurs). The form is handed out once a week in a regular semester course and students’ anonymous responses are compiled. These are then shared at the beginning of the next class and used to make the class more responsive to students’ concerns (see Chapter 6).

It’s become apparent to me that each time I think that I’ve finally understood the dynamics of a particular course and that I don’t need to do a lot of preparation anymore, I’m always mistaken. It may still go well, but there will always be new wrinkles and features to consider, and every group is different. Sometimes this involves drastic change, as in moving primarily from face-to-face teaching to online instruction. I’ve realized that online things need a lot more time to the extent that I double small group discussion time when in the medium. Also, over the years, I’ve pared down my reading requirements. Initially in my career, I encouraged an encyclopedic comprehension of a topic by providing long lists of citations. Now, instead of asking students to read twenty pieces, I would rather have them just read one piece well and get into it at a deeper level.

One of the most unpredictable and difficult dynamics to predict is that of building relationships. Doing this is particularly important when trying to lead students on a critical thinking journey, because people need confidence in whoever is leading that process and to trust that they’re in good hands. But building relationships across differences of race, class, gender, ability, and identity is incredibly complicated and often requires you constantly to

What does it mean to teach well?

readjust the assumptions you hold. To use Mezirow’s (1997) terminology around transformational learning, the more experience I have, the more my meaning schemes and perspectives change.

This is why the tradition of classic American pragmatism associated with Emerson, Peirce, Mead, and Dewey is so important. My shorthand definition of this tradition is that it’s the experimental pursuit of beautiful consequences. The beautiful consequences we’re trying to pursue are those associated with developing students’ understanding and their acquiring particular skills and knowledge. Because our contexts for learning and teaching are constantly changing, we need to be experimental in this pursuit, always open to examining experience, rethinking assumptions, and taking risks.

The world will always confound theory with its contextual and complex reality. Teaching and learning have an astonishing alterity . They exhibit the realities of difference, subtlety, and nuance derived from the variety and intersection of culture, personalities, identities, and human experience. Even in a class that looks the same and where students come from similar backgrounds, there is still going to be a significant difference in the way that individuals process information. The more we know about brain chemistry and the way the brain works, the more complex things become.

Good teaching advances learners’ understanding. Anything that helps someone develop a skill set is good teaching. All approaches are welcome if they move students in the direction we want them to go. I grew up in an era when lecturing was vilified as authoritarian and demagogic and viewed negatively as a one-way passive format. So an early mantra for me was ‘Don’t Lecture.’ But while a lecture can certainly induce passivity, so can a discussion if it’s dominated by a few participants. A discussion is highly authoritarian if its leader steers participants to come to a predetermined conclusion. So these days I’m quite happy to lecture if it will help students understand the fundamentals of a topic and allow me to model critical thinking.

The longer I work with learners from different backgrounds, the more I realize that I have to vary my approach. With students from Indigenous and tribal cultures I have to be aware that silence is valued and that there’s an honoring of collaboration and collectivism. Students from Japan, Korea, and China are schooled in a more Confucian approach to learning, where the teacher is revered and good learning is recognized as imitating what the teacher does. If I tell those students that I’m not going to lecture because it’s antithetical to critical thinking, and that I want them to tell me where my thinking is incorrect, then that creates an incredible double bind for

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way, but not quite like the town doctors; and the ministers are very nice—” This she said in a hesitating undertone, not expressive of hearty concurrence, and ended in a firmer voice, “but not like my own.”

“’Deed, mem,” said Hillend, “gi’e us farmers a gude miller an’ a gude smith, an’ we can do weel enough wi’ ony ministers or doctors that likes to come.”

“That wasna bad for Hillend,” said Bell.

“Well, Bell,” said Mr. Walker, “I thought it rather hard on the ministers when I first heard the story, but—” And here he gave his views of the Non-Intrusionists with, for him, unusual fervour, and added, “Now I quite agree with Hillend, that congregations should accept, and welcome, and honour the ministers who are appointed over them.”

“That’s without a doubt,” said Bell; “and esteem them very highly for their work’s sake.”

The news of Mr Walker’s appointment to Blinkbonny was received with first a stare, then a shrug of the shoulders, then a pretty general feeling that “they might have had worse.” He was certainly not a shining light, but he was a nice man, had a large family, and it would be a good change for them. And although the local poetaster circulated a sorry effusion on the subject, in which he, without acknowledgment, stole from Cowper’s Needless Alarm,—

“A mutton statelier than the rest,” and—

“His loving mate and true, But more discreet than he, a Moorland ewe,”

“AS YOU LIKE IT.”

changing the original “Cambrian” to “Moorland,” it did not take, and Blinkbonny on its personal and social and “soft” side was ready to “entertain” Mr. Walker.

He carried the news of his own appointment to the manse, and although it surprised Mr. Barrie at the moment, he heartily wished him every success and comfort, and added that he would find the manse at his service by the time he was inducted. Mr. Walker assured Mr. Barrie that there was no hurry, as “he did not see that they could possibly come in until after the harvest was past at Middlemoor.”

When Bell heard that Mr. Walker was coming to Blinkbonny, she forgot her usual good manners. “Mr. Walker!—Walker o’ Middlemoor!—fat Walker’s gotten the kirk, has he? He’s a slow coach—pity the folk that gangs to hear him; but ’deed they’ll no’ mony gang. He minds me o’ Cauldwell’s speech at the cattle show. After Sir John palavered away about the grand stock, and praised Cauldwell for gettin’ sae money prizes, the decent man just said, ‘Sir John and gentlemen, thank ye a’ kindly. I’m nae hand o’ makin’ a speech. I may be a man among sheep, but I’m a sheep among men.’” And Bell showed how changeable human affections are; for although Mr. Walker and she had been hand-and-glove friends, she summed up with, “Mr. Walker will never fill Mr. Barrie’s shoon [shoes]. I never could thole[11] him an’ his filthy tobacco smoke. Ugh! ma puir kitchen will sune be in a bonny mess; an’ I dinna ken what to think about the things in the garden an’ outhouses that are ours, for, as Mrs. Walker ance said to me, her motto was, ‘Count like Jews and ’gree like brithers.’”

JEWS AND BRITHERS.

[11] Endure.

But when the settling up came, Bell found Mrs. Walker “easy dealt wi’,”—not only satisfied with her valuation, but very complimentary as to the state in which everything was left, and very agreeable—very.

CHAPTER VII.

OUT OF THE OLD HOME AND INTO THE NEW.

“Confide ye aye in Providence, for Providence is kind, An’ bear ye a’ life’s changes wi’ a calm an’ tranquil mind; Though press’d an’ hemm’d on every side, ha’e faith an’ ye’ll win through, For ilka blade o’ grass keps its ain drap o’ dew ”

James Ballantine

MR. BARRIE had written to Sir John McLelland, thanking him for his uniform kindness, and saying that he had disjoined himself from the Established Church. He also wrote to the clerk of his presbytery to the same effect, adding that he would leave the manse as soon as he could.

A short time sufficed to put Knowe Park into habitable order. Whenever this was known, Mr. Barrie was cumbered by proffers of help from the farmers in the parish. He could have had fifty carts to remove his furniture for one that he required; and acts or offers of considerate attention were so showered on him that he was embarrassed by them.

At length the day came for “flitting.” It was a fine morning in the middle of summer,—everything was looking its best. The manse in itself was a charming place. To Mr. and Mrs. Barrie and their children it had been a happy home, and in their inmost hearts it was hallowed by many tender associations; and the church was endeared to Mr. Barrie as he recalled the pleasant meetings therein with his beloved flock. The parting was a bitter ordeal, trying to flesh and blood, and as such they felt it very keenly

At the hour for family worship, the men who were taking down the furniture and making it ready for being carted were asked to come to the “books;” and they

THE MELODY

OF JOY AND PEACE.

told afterwards that in singing the 23d Psalm their voices quivered, and that there was a lump in their throat as the 138th Psalm was read as the “ordinary” for the morning, for the circumstances seemed to give additional meaning to such parts of it as—“strengthenedst me with strength in my soul,” “though I walk in the midst of trouble, Thou wilt revive me,” “the Lord will perfect that which concerneth me,” “forsake not the works of Thine own hands.”

As soon as the first cart was laden and off, Bell went to Knowe Park to get things put rightly in and up. The three elder children had resolved to flit their own belongings. James took his small barrow, filled with a confused load of skates, books, etc. Mary carried her little chair, Black Tam the negro doll, and some books and toys; Lewie his little chair, a toy horse, and a whip. They had reached the post office (which stood a little back from the main street), and were resting on the broad open pavement in front of it, James sitting on his barrow, the others in their chairs.

Dr. Guthrie, who had been spending a day or two in the neighbourhood, was calling at the post office. Soon, as his quick eye rested on the singular group, his face became radiant with such a smile as he could give, and which the children returned very frankly. He went close to them, stooped down and patted Mary’s cheek, got his hand under her chin and stroked it playfully, all the while looking kindly in her face; then glancing at her lap, he said:

DR. GUTHRIE AND THE BAIRNS.

“What’s the name of that fine doll, my wee pet? is it Sambo, or Pompey, or what?”

“That’s black Tam,” said Mary. “It was Nellie’s doll, and I’m taking it to our new house.”

“Nellie’s, was it? And is Nellie too old for dolls now, and has she given it to you? He looks as if he had seen better days.”

“Oh! please; sir, Nellie’s dead,” said Mary, looking towards the churchyard; “she’s buried over there.”

“But Bell and mamma say that Nellie’s in heaven,” said Lewie very decidedly.

The suddenness and beauty of Lewie’s answer strongly affected Dr Guthrie. He took out his snuff-box and took a moderate pinch, then clapped Lewie’s head, and said:

“Yes, my wee man, you’re right; Nellie’s in heaven. But what’s your name?”

James now took speech in hand: “My name’s James Barrie, and this is Mary, and this is Lewie. We’re flitting from the manse over yonder;” and he pointed in the same direction as Mary had looked. But Dr. Guthrie, thus suddenly brought into contact with this stern reality of the Disruption, had again to apply to his snuff-box, and was in the act of taking it out of his pocket when Sir John McLelland drove up to the post office and alighted. Dr. Guthrie and he knew one another as members of Assembly, and they shook hands cordially, Sir John expressing surprise at seeing the doctor there.

“Sir John,” said the doctor, “excuse me,”—and he dried the tear that was coursing down his cheek,—“do you know these children?”

Sir John had not observed the group, but he looked at them long enough to admit of Dr Guthrie pulling out his box, taking one good snuff, and getting another ready for despatch in his fingers.

“Oh, yes,” said Sir John, “they are Mr Barrie’s children;” then looking at James: “How are mamma and papa keeping?”

The children had risen, and the boys had taken off their caps when Sir John appeared. In answer to the question James said: “They’re quite well, thank you, sir; we’re all going to our new house to-day; we’re helping to flit.”

Dr. Guthrie took his reserve snuff, looked first at Sir John, then at the children, and swinging his hand so that it pointed to the children, then to the manse, and resting it now towards them and again towards it, he recited with much feeling, for he seemed deeply moved:

GIFFGAFF.

“From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs, This makes her loved at home, revered abroad; Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, An honest man’s the noblest work of God ”

By this time several of the villagers were attracted by the scene, and they scarcely could repress the cheer that was struggling for vent in their throats. Respect for Sir John, however, kept it down until he drove away, when a right hearty greeting was given to Dr. Guthrie, in whose eyes the tear still trembled, and many pressed forward to grasp his hand,—none more warmly than Kennedy the tailor, who, producing his snuff-box, said:

“Ye’ll excuse me, sir; I dinna ken ye, but—ye’ll excuse me, sir—but would ye do me the honour of takin’ a snuff out of my box?”

“Certainly, my good friend,” said the doctor; “and we’ll giff-gaff,” handing his box to the tailor, and helping himself out of Kennedy’s dimpled, black-looking, oval-shaped tin box.

The tailor took a pinch, said it was “prime snuff,” and added: “Burns is a great poet, and that was a grand verse you gied us the noo, and the occasion’s worthy o’t. Mr. Barrie ’s an honest man, but he’s far mair, he’s a patriot-martyr.”

The last cartload had left the manse; there was nothing for Mr. and Mrs. Barrie to do but lock the door and follow. They paid a farewell visit to each room. Their footsteps sounded harshly through the house, now empty and dreary, still they were loath to leave. When they were fairly outside of the front door they lingered on its step; then Mr. Barrie, with a quick “This will never do,” locked the door and withdrew the key.

They were bracing themselves for their trying walk past the church, past the churchyard, and through the village, when a noise, a familiar noise, yet with an eerie wail in it, made them both start. It came from old Tibby the cat—Nellie’s Tibby. Bell had carried her to Knowe Park in a basket as carefully as if she had been Nellie herself, and had shut her up in a room. When the children came, James and Mary had got strict orders to watch her; but Tibby had beaten them all and

got off, and home and into some quiet corner of the manse, whence, when the door was locked, she crept out, uttering her wailing protest.

“Poor Tibby,” said Mrs. Barrie, “we must take you with us.”

When the door was re-opened, Tibby was easily caught. She had evidently felt convinced, after a bewildered ramble through the empty house, that there was some reason for her late transportation and imprisonment.

This little incident re-opened the floodgates of tender memories, and forced tears from Mrs. Barrie’s eyes, although by that time the fountain had been largely drawn upon. She felt thankful to have something else than herself to think of; and Tibby’s presence in her arm, tucked cosily into the corner of her shawl, served to divide her attention, and supplied sufficient amount of occupation to make the walk less trying to her. She leaned heavily on Mr. Barrie’s arm, partly from weariness, partly from excitement.

When they reached Knowe Park, Bell had tea set for them in the parlour; and the children, having already made a complete round of the whole premises, gave at the tea-table cheering proofs that they had not lost their appetites, as well as curious details of what they had discovered in their ramblings over their new home.

THE NEW HOME.

Bell had got the bedrooms into wonderful order for their accommodation at night, and this deprived kind neighbours of the pleasure they would have had in “putting up” for a few nights all or any of the family Within a few days they all felt quite at home, and the additional work entailed by making the manse things go as far as they could, kept them so busy that they were surprised at their having got over the flitting, and especially the “leaving” of the manse, so soon and so quietly.

I did not think it possible that Bell could have wrought harder than I had always known her to do; but she did, and soon Knowe Park was as much to her, in as far as the garden and live stock were concerned, as the old homestead had been. And although Guy the beadle offered to bring out of the manse garden whatever she

wished, Bell had enough and to spare, and told Guy to use for himself what he liked, and after that only to sell what was ripe or “near spoiling.”

True to his trust, Guy brought her a fair sum of money obtained in this way, which she handed to Mr. Barrie, not Mrs. Barrie as usual, telling him how it had come. Mr. Barrie was greatly pleased with Guy and Bell, and thanked them warmly; but to Bell’s astonishment he handed her back the money, and said: “Give it to the poor, Bell, and oh! let us be thankful we have something to give away.”

This was several steps in advance of Bell’s notions of what was called for, and she spoke to Mrs. Barrie about it. Mrs. Barrie was well aware that she would need to be very economical, but Mr. Barrie’s “thankful to have something to give away” was so like himself, and the money had come so unexpectedly, that she said:

“Certainly, Bell, we’ll carry out Mr. Barrie’s wishes; and when something has thus come that we can give, let us be thankful to get the more blessedness, for it is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Bell could not quite go in with this doctrine. She thought for a little, and then said hesitatingly:

“Just so, mem; but you’ll surely no’ object to me selling whatever’s to spare at Knowe Park, mem, will ye? I think less o’ what comes frae the auld manse; an’ I’m aye gaun to ca’t that, an’ this house is to be the manse. No’ the new manse, but the manse—the manse.”

“Do as you have always done, Bell; no directions I could give would serve you so well as your own good sense. And I have been so unsettled by the events of the past two months that I hardly know my own mind; but one thing I do know, and feel—” here Mrs. Barrie’s eyes filled, and she finished the sentence with a trembling voice, “and that is, that you have been a sister and a mother to us all,—a Deborah and a Ruth, a Martha and a Dorcas put together. May God reward you.”

BOTH RIGHT.

This was nearly too much for Bell, but the necessity of getting on and getting through was pressing her strongly. She accordingly braced herself up, and said in a cheerful tone:

“Mrs. Barrie, I’ve gotten ower a’ my fears an’ cares o’ a worldly kind about this kirk business, an’ I’m humbled to think that I spoke to you an’ the minister an’ ithers as I did, an’ that I didna join the noble army till after the battle was won; but noo,” said she with great solemnity, “I pray that I may mak’ up for my faintin’ in the day o’ adversity by settin’ my face like a flint to my wark,” and here she lowered her tone. “But I’m forgettin’ mysel’, an’ we maun a’ set the stout heart to the stey [steep] brae, an’ gather up the loins o’ our minds and heads and hands, and no’ turn back like Lot’s wife. We’re gaun to dae fine here: the range is very licht on the coals; an’ the hens are takin’ to the place, an’ layin’ weel; an’ Daisy’s up to her knees in clover,” and here Bell put on her blithest look, “an’ I never saw either Mr. Barrie or you lookin’ better. And we maunna let it be said that we’re ‘unsettled,’ when in every sense o’ the word we’re settled, and weel settled,—we couldna be better,—we’re just real weel set.”

Bell’s hearty speech put Mrs. Barrie into good spirits. She left the kitchen with a smile on her lip and a warm thought in her heart, which found expression as she walked through the lobby in “Thank God for Bell!”

Bell was contentedly happy because she was constantly busy, and her schemes prospered. From the day Mr. Barrie had hinted at the possibility of their leaving the manse, she set herself to contrive if by any means she could be more than ever one of the breadwinners, and her first attempt was on the hens. Some one had told her about the increased yield of eggs which Sir John’s henwife had got by some changes she had made in the food and treatment of her poultry Bell adopted the new system, and improved on it. She succeeded far beyond her expectations, and with a happy face told me of her luck one afternoon when she was ordering some peppercorns and other spices, with which to experiment still further on a notion of her own.

SCIENCE AND

POULTRY.

“I’ve been trying different plans wi’ my hens. I first gied them dry grain, and they did but middlin’; then I gied them rough meal, an’ they did better; syne I boiled their meat, an’ put a ‘curn’[12] o’ spice in’t, an’ they did splendid—far mair than paid for the extra meat; then

I got a cracknel frae the candlemaker (ane o’ yon dark, cheeselookin’ things that they make out o’ the rinds o’ fat, an’ skins, an’ sic like that comes out o’ their tallow), and boiled a bit o’ it among their meat, and the result was extraordinary; they just laid on an’ on till they actually reduced themselves to fair skeletons. I was fair affronted to see them about the place, an’ I had to gi’e them a rest an’ change their victuals. Now I try to mix their meat so as to get them baith to lay weel an’ to be size for the table. But ye’ll hae seen what grand eggs I’ve been sending to yoursel’, an’ how mony mair than before?”

[12] A small quantity

I knew that to be the case, and said so. Bell continued:

“But besides that, early in the spring I got some settings o’ eggs that they say are a grand kind, and the birds are a gude size a’ready. I got them from Dan Corbet, an’ so I wadna like to say very muckle about them, for Dan’s no’ aye to lippen[13] to. ’Deed, since we’ve come to live nearer him, I’m no sae high about them, for he has a vermin o’ game-cocks about him, and they whiles cross the north park and fecht wi’ mine—they’re a fair torment.”

[13] Trust

Dan Corbet was a “queer mixture.” He was a native of Blinkbonny, but had been out of the parish for several years; report said he had been a smuggler on the west coast of Scotland. He returned to his native parish about the year 1820, with scars on his face, and without one of his eyes, which gave him a sinister look. For some years he had been night-watchman in the churchyard, as the outrageous custom of violating the sanctity of the grave in order to procure subjects for surgical demonstration and actual use in teaching anatomy had sent a thrill of horror over Scotland, and had

led to the systematic watching of churchyards by at least two individuals every night. Dan was the paid regular watchman, and at least one or more respectable householders by turns watched with him. Dan’s reckless character fitted him for the dreary post; and although none of those who watched with him respected him, they found that he was always wakeful, and, in the matter in hand, trustworthy.

When the night watching was given up, Dan maintained himself by doing on a larger scale the odd sorts of jobs which he had sometimes taken in hand in order to add to his salary as watchman, or “dummie doctor,” as he was called. My older readers will remember with what feelings of indignation the resurrectionists or dummie doctors (for these were the names given to the violators of the graves) were spoken of, and that after their disappearance the odious name, “dummie doctor,” sometimes stuck to the watchman. Dan acted amongst the surrounding farmers as butcher, molecatcher, rat-catcher, and, in a rough way, as a veterinary surgeon; was employed as extra hand at sheep-shearings, corn-threshings, etc. He was a regular attender of local cattle markets, fairs, races, and games; a good and keen fisher, and strongly suspected of being a poacher, but never convicted. He was a wiry, spare, athletic man of about 5 feet 11 inches high, with a weatherbeaten countenance, thin grizzled hair, and a long stride. He lived in a cottage, divided by a single park-breadth from Knowe Park, and kept a perfect menagerie of dogs, ferrets, goats, and fowls—the latter being principally game sorts. His favourite pastime was cock-fighting; but it was, to Dan’s great regret, being discountenanced and put down. He had a variety of surnames; “the Corbie,” as a contraction of his own name, was the most common, but he was known as the “Mowdie” (mole), the “Rat,” the “Doctor,” the “Vet.,” and “Ggemmie,” as well as the “Dummie Doctor” or “Dummie.”

THE DUMMIE DOCTOR.

The eggs he had given to Bell were not from his stock, but had been got in exchange for some of these; and as he had sometimes been employed by Bell as a butcher, there was a trade connection between them, but the intimacy had been purely “professional,” as

Dan, in the matter of social position or religion, was looked on as quite an outcast; and the description of him, in this respect, ranged from “a poor creature” to “an awfu’ man.”

Dan had got a setting of eggs from a very rare strain of game fowls, and had been loud in laying off their properties to his cronies, some of whom, on the night that Dan “set” them, took them carefully from under the hen and put ducks’ eggs in their place; they then crossed the field, got over Knowe Park wall, and put Dan’s eggs under one of Bell’s “clockers,”[14] using every precaution not to injure the eggs, as well as to avoid detection.

[14] Clucking hens.

Dan waited long and wearily for his expected brood; he looked for them on the reckoned day, but it passed, and the next, and the next, until a full week had elapsed, and still no birds. Early on the eighth morning he determined to “pitch” the eggs away, and was angrily stooping down to lift off the hen, which, although it was a great favourite and a “splendid sitter,” would have had a rough toss and a long one, when he heard a cheep.

The welcome sound was marrow to his bones. “Eh!” was his first exclamation; “what’s that? is’t possible after a’?” He heard more cheeping. “Isn’t it a gude thing I’ve been sae patient?” Then looking at the hen, which, but a minute before, he was preparing to use very roughly, he said, “Eh, grannie, grannie, ye’re the best clocker in the county; eh, my auld darlin’, my queen o’ beauty, ye’ll no’ want your handfu’ o’ groats for this—I’ll gi’e ye a peck; jist anither day, grannie, an’ ye’ll get oot wi’ yer darlin’s, ye ace o’ diements!”

HIDDEN TREASUR ES.

The cheeping had now become very decided, and Dan, again addressing grannie, said: “Sit on, my flower o’ the flock, my fail-menever, hap[15] the giant-killers wi’ yer bonnie, golden, cosy feathers just till the nicht, till their wee jackets an’ glancin’ spurs are dry; an’ I’ll bring a’ the neebors about seven o’clock when they come hame,

and I’ll open the door, an’ ye’ll march out like Wallington at the head o’ the Scotch Greys at Waterloo; and will they no’ stare when they see your sturdy family following ye like the Royal Artillery?”

[15] Cover carefully.

He then locked the door, and “warned” his cronies and neighbours to come “sharp seven,” and they would see something really worth their while.

Dan was in the fidgets all afternoon. Shortly before seven o’clock a small crowd had gathered in his garden, to which Dan told the pedigree of the birds, and spoke of their qualities in the most glowing terms.

“Let’s see them, Dan,” said several voices; “let’s see them.”

“I’m waiting for Watty,” said Dan; and turning to a boy, said, “Gang to the house-end, ma man, an’ see if he’s no’ comin’;” then addressing his visitors, he said, “Watty’s the only man that I’m feared for in this district; his birds hae beaten mine owre often; I’ll tether him noo, or I’m cheated.”

As Dan finished this speech, Watty, a queer-looking customer wearing a hairy skull-cap, smoking a short black pipe, and with both hands in his pockets, joined the gathering. He gave a side nod to Dan, and said “Hoo’s a’?” to the company.

’TWIXT THE CUP AND THE LIP.

“Noo for the show!” said Dan, as he unlocked the hen-house (it was coal-house, goat-house, and served various other purposes), and flung the door wide open, saying, “Come awa’, grannie, wi’ your ‘royal family.’ There’s a pictur’, men, for ye.”

Grannie’s family had been restless, because hungry and particularly thirsty, and she and they obeyed Dan’s summons with great readiness and even haste.

Watty, who had till then smoked on in silence, quickly took the pipe out of his mouth, stooped a little, shaded his eyes with one hand, and seemed sadly puzzled. His first remark was:

“Man, Dan, they’ve awfu’ braid nebs” (broad bills).

“Braid nebs, or no’ braid nebs,” said Dan, “the game’s there onyway.”

“May be,” said Watty, “but they have maist awfu’ braid nebs,” for by this time he and all the onlookers had “smelt a rat;” “and in ma opinion they’re jucks.”

“Ye’re a juck!” said Dan, looking at him fiercely.

“Dinna look at me, Dan, look at them; look at their nebs, look at their wab-feet—is thae no jucks?”

A second glance revealed to Dan that this was too true.

Roars of laughter, which only such an audience can give, ensued, in which “Braid nebs,” “Gemm jucks,” “Grannie’s royal family,” “Tether Watty,” were heard amidst the noisy peals of the uncontrolled and apparently uncontrollable merriment.

Dan looked unutterable things; his face was one of dismal agony. He took side glances at the crowd; each followed by a long look—a perplexed, vindictive look—at the ducklings; whilst all the while the crowd waxed merrier, and laughed louder as they saw his miserable, heartbroken countenance.

Watty stooped down to lift a duckling, saying at the same time, “Man, Dan, have ye lost your sicht? Div ye no’ see that thae’s jucks? Look at their nebs, their feet, their size; hear their weet-weet;” but “Grannie” barred the pass, flew at his hand, and pecked it sharply. This revived the sorely afflicted Dan, and rousing himself, he said, “Weel dune, grannie!” which the crowd received with a cheer and a very loud laugh.

One of the onlookers, wishing to soothe Dan, said: “Jucks are as gude as hens ony day, Dan; an’ they’re healthy-like birds.”

“You ignorant gomeral![16] you senseless blockhead! you born idiot!” said Dan, his excitement increasing as he proceeded; “jucks like

game-cocks! jucks like the kind o’ game-cocks that should ha’ been there, that were set by my ain hands! haud yer bletherin’[17] tongue. Somebody’s been puggyin’[18] me. If I kent wha dared to tak’ their nap[19] aff me, I wad gi’e them what they wad mind a’ their days; I would fell them!”

[16] Stupid fellow

[17] Foolish talking.

[18] Playing monkey tricks.

[19] Fun

A large crowd had now collected in Dan’s garden, and when the new-comers heard the cause of the merriment, they joined in it and kept it up.

LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE.

“What are ye a’ doin’ laughin’ there at, like heeawnies [hyenas]? Out o’ this, every one o’ ye, or I’ll gar some o’ ye laugh on the ither side o’ yer lug [ear]!” said Dan, looking daggers.

“Lock them up, Dan, for fear the witches change them into turkeys,” said one of the crowd.

This made Dan furious: he seized an old spade which lay on the top of his hen-house, and vowed that he “would fell ony man that said another word.”

“If ye can catch him,” said a waif, with a knowing wink; and he made off as fast as he could.

“If I can what?” said Dan. “I believe you’re the vagabond that’s puggied me, and I’ll catch ye, supple an’ a’ as ye think ye are!”

Dan started, holding the spade over his head, fury in his eye, vengeance in his heart. The crowd saw that his blood was up, and cried, “Run, run, run for your very life!”

The man got into the field that lay between Dan’s cottage and Knowe Park; Dan followed, as did also many of the crowd. The pursued man, repenting of his rashness, and fearing the worst, as well he might, made straight for Knowe Park wall.

Bell had heard the laughter when milking Daisy; Mr. and Mrs. Barrie had heard it when taking an evening stroll in the garden, and all three were standing at the wall wondering what could cause it, as the laughter was unusually boisterous. They saw the chase begin. The flying man observed Mr. Barrie, and made toward him as to a city of refuge. When Mr. Barrie saw Dan rushing on, so dangerously armed and so furious, he cried loudly, “Stop, Corbett! stop! I command you.”

This made Dan slacken his pace and lower his spade, but he walked sulkily on with the crowd, saying, “I’m no’ dune wi’ him yet. I’ll gi’e him’t for this yet.—Wait a wee, just wait a wee,” until they came to the wall of the garden.

“Whatever is all this about?” said Mr. Barrie. “What’s wrong, Corbett, that you are so furious?”

“A’s wrang, sir, a’s wrang. I’ve been rubbit [i.e. robbed], an’ insulted, an’ chagareened by that—” It took Dan a little time to select an epithet strong enough for the occasion, and at the same time fit for the minister’s ears. This was a difficult matter; many rushed to his tongue-end, strong, withering, seasoned; undoubtedly, had it not been for Mr. Barrie, he would have fired them off in a volley, and greatly relieved himself thereby. At length he hurled out, “that unhanged vagabond, he’s puggied me, but—”

Mr. Barrie looked at Dan, and said, “Stop, Corbett, say no more till your passion cools;” then turning to the crowd he said, “What is the cause of this unseemly uproar?”

PROBING THE WOUND.

Watty and several others began to explain the affair, but every one that attempted it had to stop after saying a word or two; even the offending man, although now quite safe, was unable to get beyond “Dan set hens’ eggs” for laughing, and every man in the field was writhing in fits and contortions, through excessive laughter, with the exception of Dan, on whom the laughter was telling like oil on a flame.

Mr. Barrie looked at Dan, and seeing that he was becoming even more ferocious, said calmly: “Corbett, from the behaviour of the crowd I suspect they have been playing some trick on you, and they evidently have succeeded to their entire satisfaction, but to your great annoyance. Please tell me really what has excited you.”

Dan told his story. The laughter was quite as general, but became more distant as he proceeded, for whilst telling his tale he scowled on the “grinning baboons,” as he called them, and clutched his spade angrily, which still further widened the circle. Although Mr. Barrie remained grave, Mrs. Barrie could not but laugh quietly, and Bell, sheltered by an evergreen shrub, did so heartily, repeating, “Well, I never!” All at once she stopped, thought a little, then saying to herself, “That explains it,” she came close to the wall at the point where Dan stood, and said: “There’s a brood o’ chickens, lang-leggit, sharp-nebbit things, come to me that I never set; they’re maybe yours, they’re no ours—they’re come-o’-wills.”

“What!” said Dan; “whan did they come out?”

“This day week exactly.”

“Let’s see them. Come in, Watty, an’ gie’s your skill o’ them,” said Dan, with a happier but still nervous face; then addressing himself to Bell, he said: “Hoo mony came oot?”

“Eleven out o’ thirteen; there were twa eggs did naething.”

“That’s very gude; that’s grand!” said Dan, who was already climbing the wall to get in.

“Had ye no’ better wait till the morn’s mornin’?” said the considerate Bell. “They’re a’ shut up for the nicht, an’ cosy under their mother’s

wing; ye’ll disturb them, puir things.”

“I maun see them the nicht; I’ll no’ live if I dinna see them the noo, but I’ll be real canny wi’ them. Come on.”

Dan, Watty, and Bell went to the “cavie” or hencoop, folded back the old bag which had been dropt over the front of it to keep the inmates warm, and Dan saw to his intense delight two little heads peeping from under their feathery covering. His educated although single eye at once settled the kind: “Game, game, every inch o’ them, and baith cocks!” Then turning to his crony he said: “Watty, you’ll lift the hen canny, canny, an’ I’ll tak’ stock.”

BETTER LO’ED YE CANNA BE.

The result was “six cocks an’ five hens, the real true-blue breed,” declared by Dan, and confirmed by Watty, with the addition of, “Dan, ye’re rich noo.”

Bell would not hear of them being shifted that night, and ultimately persuaded Dan to “leave them wi’ her hen till they were pickin’ for themselves; she would take care o’ them, an’ nae cats could get near them, for she had just gotten new nets.”

Dan got Bell to take the ducks,—“he couldn’t bear them; there was nae water for them; his fowls wad dab them till there was no’ ane left; it wad be a great obleegement to him.”

When Dan got home he could not rest; he smartly took down his fishing-rod and strode to the waterside. The evening air cooled him, and he was further consoled by a good take. Under the “bass” (straw door-mat) at Knowe Park kitchen door next morning, Bell found a ten-pound salmon and three good large trouts—possibly they had not passed the water-bailiffs. Bell looked at all sides of the question of “what to do with them?” Many difficulties presented themselves to her honest, correct mind, and as the greatest of these was, “What else could she do with them?” she took in the foundlings and used them well.

There was a little coming and going between Bell and Dan, until the chickens were able to shift for themselves. When that was the case, he carried them carefully over to his own house, and shared it with

them for a few months. The ducklings throve with Bell, and she repaid Dan for them and the fish (for she found out that her guess as to its having come from Dan was correct) in several ways, but principally by occasional dozens of her “buttered” eggs. When eggs were abundant, and therefore cheap, she preserved a large quantity by rubbing them when newly laid with a very little butter all over, and keeping them in salt. It was generally thought that she had some special receipt or “secret,” for her buttered eggs had a fresh, curdy, rich flavour that few preservers could attain to.

A penurious old maid had complained to Bell that “she did not understand her hens; she was quite provoked at them, because in the summer-time, when eggs were only sixpence the dozen, they laid lots, but in the winter-time, when they were more than double that price, they would not lay at all.”

CATCHING A TARTAR.

Bell’s reply was: “I daresay no’; but ’deed, mem, ye’ll need to baith feed them better, an’ keep them cleaner and cosier, or they’ll do but little for you.”

The nicknames by which Dan had formerly been distinguished were, after the affair of the ducklings, dropt entirely out of use, and he was thereafter spoken of as “Braidnebs,” although none could use it in his hearing with impunity

Thomas Scott, the farmer of Babbie’s Mill, a forward ill-bred man, was speaking in the market to Mr Taylor, the elder already referred to in these “Bits.” Dan chanced to pass near them, and the miller said, loud enough for him and the most of the folks about the cross to hear him, “Braidnebs or no’ braidnebs, the game’s there onyway.”

Dan scowled at the miller, and tried to suppress his rage. In his own words, “I tried to steek[20] my mouth, but there was a rattlin’ in my throat like to choke me. I lookit at Mr. Taylor. He kent,[21] ’deed a’body kent, that the miller’s wife was a yammerin’[22] petted cat, an’ I said, ‘Maister Taylor, there’s a big bubblyjock[23] gangs about Babbie’s Mill yonder, but he’s dabbit[24] to death wi’ a hen.’”

[20] Shut.

[21] Knew

[22] Grumbling.

[23] Turkey-cock.

[24] Pecked

Poor “Babbie’s Mill” was well known to be “hen-pecked” at home, and the laugh was so cleverly, so deservedly, so daringly turned against him, that he was nonplussed for a little; but he screwed up his courage, and tried to look disdainfully at Dan. Dan’s single eye was glaring at him, and the blank socket of his other eye was twitching nervously. The miller looked bold, and said: “Go about your business, ye ill-tongued scoundrel!”

“Ye what?” shrieked Dan, going close up to the miller, who stept back and tried to move off; but Dan followed him closely, and poured out, in a voice compounded of bawling, howling, and hissing, whilst all the while his arm moved quickly up and down: “What did ye say?— ill-tongued? Wha has as ill a tongue as yoursel’, if it be na your wife?

Ye’ll daur to insult a man in the middle o’ the street that wasna meddlin’ wi’ you, an’ then speak o’ him being ill-tongued! Gae hame to Babbie’s Mill an ‘clapper’ there like yer auld mill, an’ tak’ double ‘mouters’[25] out o’ ither folk’s sacks to fill yer ain. Ye’re no’ mealymooed [mouthed] though ye’re a miller; dicht the stour aff your ain tongue before ye try to mend ither folks. You should be the last man to ca’ onybody a scoundrel; them that meets ye in the market wad think butter wadna melt in yer mouth, but let them gang to Babbie’s Mill an’ they’ll find ye can chew gey hard beans. What d’ye think o’