vingstone, but the
Doctor's father had shortened it by the omission of the final "e." David
wrote it for many years in the abbreviated form, but about 1857, at his
father's request, he restored the original spelling[1]. The significance
of the original form of the name was not without its influence on him.
He used to refer with great pleasure to a note from an old friend and
fellow-student, the late Professor George Wilson, of Edinburgh,
acknowledging a copy of his book in 1857: "Meanwhile, may your name be
propitious; in all your long and weary journeys may the _Living_ half of
your title outweigh the other; till after long and blessed labors, the
white _stone_ is given you in the happy land."

[Footnote 1: See Journal of Geographical Society, 1857, p. clxviii.]

Livingstone has told us most that is known of his forefathers; how his
great-grandfather fell at Culloden, fighting for the old line of kings;
how his grandfather could go back for six generations of his family
before him, giving the particulars of each; and how the only tradition
he himself felt proud of was that of the old man who had never heard of
any person in the family being guilty of dishonesty, and who charged his
children never to introduce the vice. He used also to tell his children,
when spurring them to diligence at school, that neither had he ever
heard of a Livingstone who was a donkey. He has also recorded a
tradition that the people of the island were converted from being Roman
Catholics "by the laird coming round with a man having a yellow staff,
which would seem to have attracted more attention than his teaching,
for the new religion went long afterward--perhaps it does so still--by
the name of the religion of the yellow stick." The same story is told of
perhaps a dozen other places in the Highlands; the "yellow stick" seems
to have done duty on a considerable scale.

There were traditions of Ulva life that must have been very congenial to
the temperament of David Livingstone. In the "Statistical Account" of
the parish to which it belongs[2] we read of an old custom among the
inhabitants, to remove with their flocks in the beginning of each summer
to the upland pastures, and bivouac there till they were obliged to
descend in the month of August. The open-air life, the free intercourse
of families, the roaming frolics of the young men, the songs and
merriment of young and old, seem to have made this a singularly happy
time. The writer of th