y she cradled me,
The lands that I should wander o'er,
The death that I should dee."

At the age of nine he got a New Testament from his Sunday-school teacher
for repeating the 119th Psalm on two successive evenings with only five
errors, a proof that perseverance was bred in his very bone.

His parents were poor, and at the age of ten he was put to work in the
factory as a piecer, that his earnings might aid his mother in the
struggle with the wolf which had followed the family from the island
that bore its name. After serving a number of years as a piecer, he was
promoted to be a spinner. Greatly to his mother's delight, the first
half crown he ever earned was laid by him in her lap. Livingstone has
told us that with a part of his first week's wages he purchased
Ruddiman's Rudiments of Latin, and pursued the study of that language
with unabated ardor for many years afterward at an evening class which
had been opened between the hours of eight and ten. "The dictionary part
of my labors was followed up till twelve o'clock, or later, if my mother
did not interfere by jumping up and snatching the books out of my hands.
I had to be back in the factory by six in the morning, and continue my
work, with intervals for breakfast and dinner, till eight o'clock at
night. I read in this way many of the classical authors, and knew Virgil
and Horace better at sixteen than I do now[4]."

[Footnote 4: _Missionary Travels_, p. 8.]

In his reading, he tells us that he devoured all the books that came
into his hands but novels, and that his plan was to place the book on a
portion of the spinning-jenny, so that he could catch sentence after
sentence as he passed at his work. The labor of attending to the wheels
was great, for the improvements in spinning machinery that have made it
self-acting had not then been introduced. The utmost interval that
Livingstone could have for reading at one time was less than a minute.

The thirst for reading so early shown was greatly stimulated by his
father's example. Neil Livingstone, while fond of the old Scottish
theology, was deeply interested in the enterprise of the nineteenth
century, or, as he called it, "the progress of the world," and
endeavored to interest his family in it too. Any books of travel, and
especially of missionary enterprise, that he could lay his hands on, he
eagerly read. Some publications of the Tract Society, called the _Weekly
Visitor_, the _Child's Compani