EARLY TEARS. 



a yellow staff, which would seem to have attracted more attention than his 

 teaching, for the new religion went long afterwards, perhaps it does so still, 

 by the name of ' the religion of the staff.' " 



In the olden time, religion to them was only secondary to their devotion 

 and attachment to their chief, and never seems to have taken any firm hold of 

 their imaginations. The country was poor in money, and the priests they 

 were f aniiliar with were needy and ignorant ; and within the Highland line 

 there were no splendid edifices or pomp of worship to rouse their enthusiasm, 

 so that the abandonment of their old mode of worship entailed no sacrifice.* 



"With the breaking-up of the clans and the introduction of industrial 

 occupations, and the teaching and preaching of devoted adherents of the new 

 religion, the minds of the Highlanders were moved, and for many generations 

 and even at the present day the Presbyterian form of worship has no more 

 zealous adherents than the people of the Highlands of Scotland. The man 

 with the yellow staff was, in all likelihood, one of the commissioners sent out 

 by the General Assembly to advocate the cause of the new religion among 

 those who were either indifferent about it, or were too remote from Edinburgh 

 to be affected by the deadly struggle for supremacy which was going on be- 

 tween the old creed and the new religion. 



Towards the end of the last century, finding the small farm in Ulva in- 

 sufficient for the maintenance of his family, Livingstone's grandfather removed 

 to Blantyre, where he, for a number of years, occupied a position of trust in 

 the employment of Messrs. Monteith & Co., of Blantyre Cotton "Works, his 

 sons being employed as clerks. It formed part of the old man's duty to con- 

 vey large sums of money to and from Glasgow, and his unflinching honesty 

 in this and other ways won him the respect and esteem of his employers, who 

 settled a pension on him when too old to continue his services. 



Livingstone's uncles shared in the patriotic spirit which pervaded the 

 country during the war with France, and entered the service of the king ; but 

 his father having recently got married settled down as a small grocer, the 

 returns from which business were so small as to necessitate his children being 

 sent to the factory as soon as they could earn anything to assist in the family 

 support. David Livingstone was but ten years of age, in 1823, when he 

 entered the mill as a " piecer," where he was employed from six o'clock in the 

 morning until eight o'clock at night, with intervals for breakfast and dinner. 



. * In Waverley, Sir Walter Scott very happily illustrates the non-religious character of your 

 true Highlander about the middle of last century. Waverley had just parted with Fergus Mc-Ivor, 

 and was approaching a Lowland village, " and as he now distinguished not indeed the ringing of bells, 

 but the tinkling of something Eke a hammer against the side of an old mossy, green, inverted porridge 

 pot, that hung in an open booth, of the size and shape of a parrot's cage, erected to grace the east 

 end of a building resembling an old barn, he asked Callum Beg if it were Sunday. 



' Couldna say just preceesely, Sunday seldom cam' aboon the Pass o' Bally-Brough.' " 



