M STUDY DURING WORKING-HOURS. 



brothers, one now in Canada, and the other a clergyman 

 in the United States, gratified my intense love of nature; 

 and though we generally returned so unmercifully hungry 

 and fatigued that the embryo parson shed tears, yet we 

 discovered, to us, so many new and interesting things, that 

 he was always as eager to join us next time as he was the 

 last. 



On one of these exploring tours we entered a limestone- 

 quarry, — long before geology was so popular as it is now. 

 It is impossible to describe the delight and wonder with 

 which I began to collect the shells found in the carboni- 

 ferous limestone which crops out in High Blantyre and Carn- 

 buslang. A quarry-man, seeing a little boy so engaged, 

 looked with that pitying eye which the benevolent assume 

 when viewing the insane. Addressing him with, "How 

 ever did these shells come into these rocks V "When God 

 made the rocks, he made the shells in them," was the 

 damping reply. What a deal of trouble geologists might 

 have saved themselves by adopting the Turk-like philo- 

 sophy of this Scotchman ! 



My reading while at work was carried on by placing the 

 book on a portion of the spinning-jenny, so that I could 

 catch sentence after sentence as I passed at my work : I 

 thus kept up a pretty constant study, undisturbed by the 

 roar of the machinery. To this part of my education I owe 

 my present power of completely abstracting the mind from 

 surrounding noises, so as to read and write with perfect 

 comfort amid the play of children or near the dancing and 

 songs of savages. The toil of cotton-spinning, to which 

 [ was promoted in my nineteenth year, was excessively 

 severe on a slim, loose-jointed lad, but it was well paid for; 

 and it enabled me to support myself while attending me- 

 dical and Greek classes in Glasgow in winter, as also the 

 divinity lectures of Dr. Wardlaw by working with my 

 hands in summer. I never received a farthing of aid from 

 any one, and should have accomplished my project of going 

 to China as a medical missionary, in the course of time, by 



