1814-1840 A MERCANTILE CAREER 7 



him die, having, if I recollect right, left the room in 

 great distress some half-hour before. My mother 

 prayed aloud soon after, most passionately and fer- 

 vently ; so did Dr. Coldstream. Curiously enough, 

 none of our relations came to aid the widow and her 

 children up to town, but Mr. Napier, the engineer, 

 came down of his own accord in one of his own 

 steamboats, and took on himself most kindly all the 

 arrangements. My uncles arrived the day of the 

 funeral. My mother threw herself into her brother 

 Andrew's arms, and said, " Oh Andrew ! " 



'The funeral was large and imposing. He was 

 carried "shoulder-high" to the Ramshorn Church- 

 yard, and buried in the Walkinshaw ground. ;.i;r:i. 



'By and by, shortly after, my troubles in life 

 began. Willie was apprenticed to Napier, the 

 engineer, and I was sent to Mr, 's counting-house.' 



The boy's education was thus prematurely -cut 

 short, for in the straitened circumstances in which 

 the widow found herself after her husband's death, 

 she deemed it necessary that she should take boarders, 

 and that her sons should, as early as possible, 

 begin the active business of life. Andrew was 

 intended for a mercantile career, and went when a 

 mere boy into the office to which he refers in the pre- 

 ceding extract. After being some time there he 

 removed to the warehouse of a firm of linen merchants 

 in Glasgow a situation in which he seems to have 

 been specially unhappy, for mention of the misery he 

 there endured occurs in his diaries and in his family 

 correspondence long years after he had become a 

 successful man of science. He once came upon one 

 of these old masters of his in a little inn in Wales, and 

 the following entry occurs in his journal of that day : 



