e was good, and to this day Andrew
Carnegie spells the final syllable "burgh," and pronounces it with a
loving oatmeal burr.

It was seven weeks in a sailing-ship to New York, and one week to
Pittsburgh by rail and raging canal.

The land of promise proved all that had been promised. The Carnegies
wanted jobs--they did not wait to accept situations. The father found a
place in a cotton-mill at a dollar and a half a day. Andy slipped in as
bobbin-boy and got one dollar and twenty cents a week. Five shillings a
week, all his own--to be laid in his mother's lap each Saturday
night--spelled paradise. He was helping to support the household! To
know you are useful, and realize that you are needed, is a great
stimulus to growth. Never again did the Carnegies hear that muffled
groan, "There is no work!" The synonym of the word "Carnegie" is work.

In a year little Andy had graduated to the boiler-room at two dollars a
week. It was twelve hours a day, a constant watching of water-gauges,
and a feeling of bearings for hotboxes.

Andy used to awaken the family in the dead of the night by roaring out
in hot-mush accents, "The boiler, it ha' busted!" And being shaken into
wakefulness the boy was much relieved to know that it was only a horrid
dream, and the factory had not been blown into kingdom come because a
wee laddie, red-headed and freckled, had nodded at his work.

"A rolling stone gathers no moss." This is true. However, it is also
true that if it does not gather moss, it may acquire polish.

Andrew Carnegie from boyhood had the habit of using his head as well as
his hands. The two years in the boiler and engine room of a little
factory did him a lot of good.

But when fourteen he firmly felt that he had to get out towards the
sunlight, just as potatoes in a dark cellar will in the Spring send
their sprouts reaching out towards the windows.

In Pittsburgh at this time was a young man by the name of Douglass Reid,
who was born in Edinburgh. On Sunday afternoon Reid used to visit the
Carnegies and talk about old times and new. Reid was an expert
telegraph-operator, and afterwards wrote "A History of the Telegraph."
The more he saw of Andy the more sure he was that the lad could learn
the dot and dash, and be an honor to the profession.

The Carnegies had never had a telegraph-message come to them, and didn't
want one, for folks only get messages when some one is dead.

The way you learned "the key" then was to star