he learned to be patient and brave and unselfish.

We must not think less, but more, of her for coming out of such a home.
It is not always the girls and boys who are highly favoured that grow up
to do the best and biggest things in life. Some of the men and women to
whom the world owes most had a hard time when they were young. The home
life of President Lincoln, who freed millions of slaves in America, was
like Mary's, yet his name has become one of the most famous in history.
No girl or boy should despair because they are poor or lonely or crushed
down in any way; let them fight on, quietly and patiently, and in the
end better things and happier times will come.

Mrs. Slessor now left the factory, and for a time kept a little shop, in
which Mary used to help, especially on Saturday afternoons and nights,
when trade was busiest. The girl was still dreaming dreams about the
wonderful days that lay before her, but, unlike many others who do the
same, she did her best to make hers come true. She wanted to learn
things, and she found that books would tell her, and so she was led into
the great world of knowledge. The more she read the more she wanted to
know. So eager was she that when she left home for her work, she slipped
a book into her pocket and glanced at it in the streets. She did not
know then about Dr. Livingstone, the African missionary and traveller,
but she did exactly what he had done when he was a boy: she propped a
book on a corner of the loom in the factory, and read whenever she had a
moment to spare. Her companions tell how they used to see her take out a
little note-book, put it on the weaver's beam, and jot down her
thoughts--she was always writing, they say; sometimes it was poetry,
sometimes an essay, sometimes a letter to a friend. But she never
neglected her work.

How different her lot was from that of most girls of to-day! They have
leisure for their lessons, and they learn music and do fancy work and
keep house and bake--and how many hate it all! Mary had only a few
precious minutes, but she made the most of them. The books she read
were not stories, but ones like Milton's _Paradise Lost_ and Carlyle's
_Sartor Resartus_, and so deep did she become in them at night that
sometimes she forgot everything, and read on and on through the quiet
hours, and only came to herself with a start when she heard the warning
whistle of the factory in the early morning.

She was fond of all good books, but th