Bailie Morrison, occupied as his
successor. More than one well-known Scotsman in America has called
upon me, to shake hands with "the grandson of Thomas Morrison." Mr.
Farmer, president of the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad Company,
once said to me, "I owe all that I have of learning and culture to the
influence of your grandfather"; and Ebenezer Henderson, author of the
remarkable history of Dunfermline, stated that he largely owed his
advancement in life to the fortunate fact that while a boy he entered
my grandfather's service.

I have not passed so far through life without receiving some
compliments, but I think nothing of a complimentary character has ever
pleased me so much as this from a writer in a Glasgow newspaper, who
had been a listener to a speech on Home Rule in America which I
delivered in Saint Andrew's Hall. The correspondent wrote that much
was then being said in Scotland with regard to myself and family and
especially my grandfather Thomas Morrison, and he went on to say,
"Judge my surprise when I found in the grandson on the platform, in
manner, gesture and appearance, a perfect _facsimile_ of the Thomas
Morrison of old."

My surprising likeness to my grandfather, whom I do not remember to
have ever seen, cannot be doubted, because I remember well upon my
first return to Dunfermline in my twenty-seventh year, while sitting
upon a sofa with my Uncle Bailie Morrison, that his big black eyes
filled with tears. He could not speak and rushed out of the room
overcome. Returning after a time he explained that something in me now
and then flashed before him his father, who would instantly vanish but
come back at intervals. Some gesture it was, but what precisely he
could not make out. My mother continually noticed in me some of my
grandfather's peculiarities. The doctrine of inherited tendencies is
proved every day and hour, but how subtle is the law which transmits
gesture, something as it were beyond the material body. I was deeply
impressed.

My Grandfather Morrison married Miss Hodge, of Edinburgh, a lady in
education, manners, and position, who died while the family was still
young. At this time he was in good circumstances, a leather merchant
conducting the tanning business in Dunfermline; but the peace after
the Battle of Waterloo involved him in ruin, as it did thousands; so
that while my Uncle Bailie, the eldest son, had been brought up in
what might be termed luxury, for he had a pony to ri