CHAPTER III - BOYHOOD—1841-1844

Summary

The first school-days are not always a time of progress. For one whose home life has been surrounded with an atmosphere of genial ideas and liberal pursuits, to be thrown, in the intervals of “gerund grinding,” amongst a throng of boys of average intelligence and more than average boisterousness, is not directly improving at the outset. Not that Maxwell ever retrograded—for his spirit was inherently active; but where the outward environment was such as awakened no response in him, he was like an engine whose wheels do not bite—working incessantly, but not advancing much. If the Scottish day-school system had not still been dominated by a tyrannous economy, and by that spirit of laisser faire which in education is apt to result in the prevalence of the worst, much that was in Maxwell would earlier have found natural vent and growth. As it was, he was of course storing up impressions, as under any circumstances he would have been; but his activities were apt for the time to take odd shapes, as in a healthy plant under a sneaping wind. Or, to employ another metaphor, the light in him was still aglow, but in passing through an alien medium its rays were often refracted and disintegrated. The crowd of “aimless fancies,” whose influence upon his life he so touchingly deprecated at a later time, were now most importunate; and, bright and full of innocence as they were, they produced an effect of eccentricity on superficial observers which he afterwards felt to have been a hindrance to himself.