CHAPTER XXXI 



David Livingstone, the Beloved Missionary ,c 



AS with so many of that assemblage of uncrowned monarchs, who 

 r\ stand head and shoulders above us by right of their achieve- 

 ments or their character, and whose willing subjects are bound 

 to them by ties of admiration and love rather than of loyalty or habit, 

 David Livingstone sprang from an humble race, and personally knew in 

 his youth what it was to go "forth to his work and to his labor until the 

 evening," in order to earn his daily bread. Born on the 19th of March, 

 18 1 3, at Blantyre, the hum of the busy cotton factory was the most 

 familiar sound of his early years. 

 His father, a small tea-dealer, his 

 mother a hard-working housewife, 

 and neither with any time to edu- 

 cate their merry lad, it is not sur- 

 prising that David should have 

 reached the age of ten without 

 giving any special sign of future 

 greatness, or affording any reason 

 to his parents for not gaining his 

 living by his hands. And so the 

 boy was put to work in this cotton 

 factory as a *'piecer," and began to 

 contribute his share to the support 

 of the family. 



A change in one's life not in- 

 frequently brings new possibilities 

 and other hopes before us. This daily life of manual labor would 

 seem to have enlarged the horizon of David's outlook, for he has 

 himself recorded that with a portion of his first week's wages he 

 purchased a Latin grammar! This he placed upon the loom; and, as 



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DR. DAVID LIVINGSTONE 



