A GLASGOW FACTORY BOY.
“Just above the wharves of Glasgow, on the banks of the Clyde, there once lived a factory boy, whom I will call Davie. At the age of ten he entered a cotton factory as ‘piecer.’ He was employed from six o’clock in the morning till eight at night. His parents were very poor, and he well knew that his must be a boyhood of very hard labor. But then and there, in that buzzing factory, he resolved that he would obtain an education, and would become an intelligent and a useful man. With his very first week’s wages he purchased ‘Ruddiman’s Rudiments of Latin,’ He then entered an evening school that met between the hours of eight and ten. He paid the expenses of his instruction out of his own hard earnings. At the age of sixteen he could read Virgil and Horace as readily as the pupils of the English grammar schools.
“He next began a course of self-instruction. He had been advanced in the factory from a ‘piecer’ to the spinning-jenny. He brought his books to the factory, and placing one of them on the ‘jenny,’ with the lesson open before him, he divided his attention between the running of the spindles and rudiments of knowledge. He now began to aspire to become a preacher and a missionary, and to devote his life in some self-sacrificing way to the good of mankind. He entered Glasgow University. He knew that he must work his way, but he also knew the power of resolution, and he was willing to make almost any sacrifice to gain the end. He worked at cotton-spinning in the summer, lived frugally, and applied his savings to his college studies in the winter. He completed the allotted course, and at the close was able triumphantly to say, ‘I never had a farthing that I did not earn.’
“That boy was Dr. David Livingstone.”
“An excellent story,” said Master Lewis. “A sermon in a story, and a volume of philosophy in a life. Now, Tommy, what is the most attractive thing you have seen?”
“I see it now. Oh, look! look!” said Tommy, flying to the window.
The full moon was hanging over the great castle, whitening its grim turrets.
The boys all gazed upon the scene, which appeared almost too beautiful for reality.
“It looks like a castle in the sky,” said Wyllys.
Story-telling was at an end. So the exercises ended with an exhibition of Edinburgh Castle by moonlight.
CHAPTER VII.
A RAINY EVENING STORY AT CARLISLE.
The Druids and Romans.—The Story of the Jolly Harper Man.—“When first I came to Merry Carlisle.”
CARLISLE!” said Master Lewis, as the cars stopped at a busy looking city, the terminus of many lines of railway.
“Carlisle?” asked Frank Gray, glancing at the evidences of business energy about the station. “Carlisle? I have heard that the city was a thousand years old.”
“An old city may grow,” said Master Lewis, on the way to the hotel. “In 1800, Carlisle had but 4,000 inhabitants, now it has more than 30,000.”
Carlisle was the ancient seat of the kings of Cambria, and was a Roman station in the early days of the Christian era. It was destroyed in 900 by the Danes, was ravaged by the Picts and Scots, was doubtless visited by Agricola, Severus, and Hadrian, and it has a part in the history of all the Border wars. Here half-forgotten kings lived; here Roman generals made their airy camps, and near it the grotesque ships of Roman emperors dropped their sails in the Solway. Here Christianity made an early advent, and the hideous rites of the Druid priests disappeared.
ROMANS INVADING BRITAIN.
The ancient Druids worshipped in sacred groves; the oaks were their fanes and chapels, but they erected immense stone temples open to the sky, the moon, and stars: these were their cathedrals. In them were great stones used as altars of sacrifice, and on their altars the dark and mysterious priests offered up human victims to their gods.
The country around Carlisle abounds in Roman and Druidical relics, and in antiquities associated with the Border contests. At Penrith may be seen the ruins of a Druid temple, formed of sixty-seven immense stones, called “long Meg and her daughters.”
The Isle of Man, the ancient and poetic Mona, whose grand scenery was once the supposed abode of the gods of the Saxons, lies near the Solway, and to it excursion steamers go from the western coast towns of England carrying pleasure seekers all the long summer days. Here the Druids gathered after the defeat of the Saxons by the Romans, and thither the Romans followed them, and fell upon the long-bearded priests and the wild torch-bearing priestesses, and put them to the sword. The island of Mona may be called the Druid’s sepulchre.
The afternoon was rainy, and the boys, though impatient, were confined to the hotel.
In the evening Master Lewis said,—
“One of the most quaint and curious of old English ballads is associated with Carlisle, and is founded upon a funny story which illustrates the rude simplicity of the early English court. The ballad may be found in the Percy Society’s Collections, which you may some day examine in the Boston Public Library, or indeed in any great library at home or in England. It is entitled ‘The Jolly Harper Man.’ I will relate it to you in the rather decorated style that I once heard it told to a company of young people at a Christmas gathering in one of the London charity schools. I hope it will interest you as much now as it did the boys and girls who listened to it then.
DRUID SACRIFICE.