“I am hardly interested in antiquities at all,” said George, frankly. “I try to be, but it is not in me. A living factory is more to my taste than a dead museum. The most interesting things I have seen are the great Glasgow factories. As for stories, I have been thinking of one that has more force for me than all the legends I ever read.”
“We shall be glad to hear you tell it,” said Master Lewis. “My business is teaching, and it is my duty to stimulate a love of literature. But I have all respect for a boy with mechanical taste; no lives promise greater usefulness. We will listen to George’s story.”
“It is not a romantic story,” said George. “I will call it
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.