CHAPTER XXXI 
David Livingstone, the Beloved Missionary 
AS with so many of that assemblage of uncrowned monarchs, who 
stand head and shoulders above us by right of their achieve¬ 
ments or their character, and whose willing subjects are bound 
to them by ties of admiration and love rather than of loyalty or habit, 
David Livingstone sprang from an humble race, and personally knew in 
his youth what it was to go “forth to his work and to his labor until the 
evening/' in order to earn his daily bread. Born on the 19th of March, 
1813, at Blantyre, the hum of the busy cotton factory was the most 
familiar sound of his early years. 
His father, a small tea-dealer, his 
mother a hard-working housewife, 
and neither with any time to edu¬ 
cate their merry lad, it is not sur¬ 
prising that David should have 
reached the age of ten without 
giving any special sign of future 
greatness, or affording any reason 
to his parents for not gaining his 
living by his hands. And so the 
boy was put to work in this cotton 
factory as a “piecer,” and began to 
contribute his share to the support 
of the family. 
A change in one's life not in¬ 
frequently brings new possibilities 
and other hopes before us. This daily life of manual labor would 
seem to have enlarged the horizon of David's outlook, for he has 
himself recorded that with a portion of his finst week's wages he 
ourchased a Latin grammar! This he placed upon the loom: and, as 
