8 
STUDY DURING WORKING-HOURS. 
brothers, one now in Canada, and the other a clergyman 
in the United States, gratified my intense lovo of nature; 
and though wo generally returned so unmercifully hungry 
and fatiguod that the embryo parson shed tears, yet w« 
discovered, to us, so nany now and interesting things, that 
fie was always as eajor to join us next time as ho was the 
last. 
Qp one of these exploring tours wo entered a limestone 
quarry, — long before geology was so popular as it is now. 
It is impossible to dcscriho the delight and wonder with 
which I began to collect tho shells found in the carboni- 
ferous limestone which crops out in High Blantyro and Cam- 
buslang. A quarry-man, seeing a littlo boy so engaged, 
looked vrith that pitying eye which the benevolent assumo 
when viewing tho insane. Addressing him with, “How 
ever did these shells come into these rocks ?” “ Whon God 
made tho rocks, he made the shells in them,” was the 
damping reply. What a deal of trouble geologists might 
have saved themselves by adopting tho Turk-liko philo- 
sophy of this Scotchman ! 
My reading while at work was carried on by placing tho 
book on a portion of tho spinning-jenny, so that I could 
catch sentence after sentcnco as I passed at my work : I 
thus kept up a pretty constant study, undisturbed by tho 
roar of the machinery. To this part of my education I owe 
my present, power of completely abstracting tho mind from 
surrounding noises, so as to read and writo with perfect 
comfort amid the play of children or near the dancing and 
songs of savages. Tho toil of cotton-spinning, to which 
1 was promoted in my nineteenth year, was excessively 
severe on a slim, loose-jointed lad, but it was well paid for; 
and it enabled mo to support myself while attending mo- 
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 ono, and should have accomplished my project of going 
to China as a medical missionary, in the course of time, by 
