THE APPRENTICE IN THE SUNSHINE. 39 



greatly increased by the natural pity his persecution 

 excited. 



Soon after coming to Drumlithie, impelled by his 

 rising intellectual energy and stimulated by Mrs. Pirie's 

 influence, he set himself, with the quiet determination that 

 characterized him through life, to learn to read. Happily, 

 in the village there were more than one willing hand to 

 help him up the steep stair that conducts to the temple of 

 knowledge. The good genius to whom the merit seems 

 to belong of having first taught him the letters, those 

 magical wards in the key that alone unlocks the temple 

 gate, was a woman called Mary Garvie, whose name he 

 preserved with childlike simplicity and deep gratitude to 

 the last, mentioning it to me a few months before his 

 death, more than seventy years after. She lived in the 

 cottage to the end of which the workshop was attached 

 in which John was employed. She was the wife of a 

 weaver and crofter, Robert Clark ; but, according to the 

 homely intimacy of Scottish village life, she always received 

 her maiden name from her neighbours, and she never was 

 designated by the more formal title of Mrs. Clark till, 

 inheriting a legacy, she removed to a larger and finer 

 house. She was a woman in many respects resembling 

 her good neighbour, Mrs. Pirie, being better educated than 

 usual, intelligent, kindly, and pious, though without her 

 literary tastes and accomplishments. Being next door to 

 the workshop, her house was one of John's few haunts, into 

 which he used to steal when he could. To her he seems 

 to have naturally first confided his utter want of scholastic 

 learning, rather than to his mistress, from native pride 

 and shyness and the disturbing influences in her home. 



