A satires, I'm sure, but of what, I'm not sure. Societal mores, perhaps, or the Scottish school system. Or religion. For the first couple pages, I thought it was cleverly written, but it soon just got dull and I longed for it to end. I didn't care what happened to any of the characters. The only part I thought was at all interesting was the description of Calvinism: [The] belief that God had planned for practically everybody before they were born a nasty surprise when they died. ... Although popular conceptions of Calvinism were sometimes mistaken, in this particular there was no mistake, indeed it was but a mild understanding of the case, he having made it God's pleasure to implant in certain people an erroneous sense of joy and salvation, so that their surprise at the end might be the nastier.