ijttrod. YOUTHFUL EXCURSIONS. 5 



embryo parson shed tears, we yet discovered so many inte- 

 resting things that he was always eager to join us. 



On one of these exploring tours — long before geology was so 

 popular as it is now — we entered a limestone quarry. It is 

 impossible to describe the wonder with which I began to col- 

 lect the shells of the carboniferous limestone which crops cut 

 in High Blantyre and Cambuslang. A quarryman looked at 

 me with that pitying eye which the benevolent assume when 

 viewing the insane. "How ever," said I, " did these shells 

 come into these rocks?" "When God made the rocks, He 

 made the shells in them," was the damping reply. 



My reading in the factory 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 power of 

 completly abstracting my mind from surrounding noises, so as 

 to read and write with perfect comfort amidst the play of 

 children or the dancing and songs of savages. The labour of 

 cotton-spinning, to which I was promoted in my nineteenth 

 year, was excessively severe on a slim lad, but it was well 

 paid, and enabled me to support myself while attending 

 medical and Greek classes in Glasgow in winter, and the 

 divinity lectures of Dr. Wardlaw in summer. Looking back 

 now on that period of toil, I cannot but feel thankful that it 

 formed such a material part of my early education ; and were 

 I to begin life over again, I should like to pass through the 

 same hardy training. I never received a farthing from any 

 one, and should have accomplished my project of going to 

 China as a medical missionary by my own efforts, had not 

 some friends advised my joining the London Missionary 

 Society on account of its unsectarian character. It " sends 

 neither episcopacy, nor presbyterianism, nor independency, 

 but the gospel of Christ to the heathen " This exactly agreed 

 with my ideas of what a Missionary Society ought to do ; but 

 it was not without a pang that I offered myself, for it was not 

 agreeable to one accustomed to work his owm way to become 

 in a measure dependent on others. 



Time and travel have not effaced the feelings of respect I 

 imbibed for the inhabitants of my native village. For mo- 



