Hunter,
could write, while most common people were ignorant of the art. A poor
woman got him to write a petition to the minister of Shotts parish to
augment her monthly allowance of sixpence, as she could not live on it.
He was taken to Hamilton jail for this, and having a wife and three
children at home, who without him would certainly starve, he thought of
David's feigning madness before the Philistines, and beslabbered his
beard with saliva. All who were found guilty were sent to the army in
America, or the plantations. A sergeant had compassion on him, and said,
'Tell me, gudeman, if you are really out of your mind. I'll befriend
you.' He confessed that he only feigned insanity, because he had a wife
and three bairns at home who would starve if he were sent to the army.
'Dinna say onything mair to ony body,' said the kind-hearted sergeant.
He then said to the commanding officer, 'They have given us a man clean
out of his mind: I can do nothing with the like o' him,' The officer
went to him and gave him three shillings, saying, 'Tak' that, gudeman,
and gang awa' hame to your wife and weans, 'Ay,' said mother, 'mony a
prayer went up for that sergeant, for my grandfather was an unco godly
man. He had never had so much money in his life before, for his wages
were only threepence a day."

Mrs. Livingstone, to whom David had always been a most dutiful son, died
on the 18th June, 1865, after a lingering illness which had confined her
to bed for several years. A telegram received by him at Oxford announced
her death; that telegram had been stowed away in one of his traveling
cases, for a year after (19th June, 1866), in his _Last Journals_, he
wrote this entry: "I lighted on a telegram to-day:

'Your mother died at noon on the 18th June.

This was in 1865; it affected me not a little[3]."

[Footnote 3: _Last Journals_ vol. i. p. 55]

The home in which David Livingstone grew up was bright and happy, and
presented a remarkable example of all the domestic virtues. It was ruled
by an industry that never lost an hour of the six days, and that
welcomed and honored the day of rest; a thrift that made the most of
everything, though it never got far beyond the bare necessaries of life;
a self-restraint that admitted no stimulant within the door, and that
faced bravely and steadily all the burdens of life; a love of books that
showed the presence of a cultivated taste, with a fear of God that
dignified the life which it mou