ideal is the ever-present real. The actual has yet to
come when, later in life, he is launched into the workaday world of
stern reality. Even then, and till his last day, the early impressions
remain, sometimes for short seasons disappearing perchance, but only
apparently driven away or suppressed. They are always rising and
coming again to the front to exert their influence, to elevate his
thought and color his life. No bright child of Dunfermline can escape
the influence of the Abbey, Palace, and Glen. These touch him and set
fire to the latent spark within, making him something different and
beyond what, less happily born, he would have become. Under these
inspiring conditions my parents had also been born, and hence came, I
doubt not, the potency of the romantic and poetic strain which
pervaded both.

As my father succeeded in the weaving business we removed from Moodie
Street to a much more commodious house in Reid's Park. My father's
four or five looms occupied the lower story; we resided in the upper,
which was reached, after a fashion common in the older Scottish
houses, by outside stairs from the pavement. It is here that my
earliest recollections begin, and, strangely enough, the first trace
of memory takes me back to a day when I saw a small map of America. It
was upon rollers and about two feet square. Upon this my father,
mother, Uncle William, and Aunt Aitken were looking for Pittsburgh and
pointing out Lake Erie and Niagara. Soon after my uncle and Aunt
Aitken sailed for the land of promise.

At this time I remember my cousin-brother, George Lauder ("Dod"), and
myself were deeply impressed with the great danger overhanging us
because a lawless flag was secreted in the garret. It had been painted
to be carried, and I believe was carried by my father, or uncle, or
some other good radical of our family, in a procession during the Corn
Law agitation. There had been riots in the town and a troop of cavalry
was quartered in the Guildhall. My grandfathers and uncles on both
sides, and my father, had been foremost in addressing meetings, and
the whole family circle was in a ferment.

I remember as if it were yesterday being awakened during the night by
a tap at the back window by men who had come to inform my parents that
my uncle, Bailie Morrison, had been thrown into jail because he had
dared to hold a meeting which had been forbidden. The sheriff with the
aid of the soldiers had arrested him a few miles fro