be said: there was
not a prouder family in the land. A keen sense of honor, independence,
self-respect, pervaded the household. Walter Scott said of Burns that
he had the most extraordinary eye he ever saw in a human being. I can
say as much for my mother. As Burns has it:

"Her eye even turned on empty space,
Beamed keen with honor."

Anything low, mean, deceitful, shifty, coarse, underhand, or gossipy
was foreign to that heroic soul. Tom and I could not help growing up
respectable characters, having such a mother and such a father, for
the father, too, was one of nature's noblemen, beloved by all, a
saint.

Soon after this incident my father found it necessary to give up
hand-loom weaving and to enter the cotton factory of Mr. Blackstock,
an old Scotsman in Allegheny City, where we lived. In this factory he
also obtained for me a position as bobbin boy, and my first work was
done there at one dollar and twenty cents per week. It was a hard
life. In the winter father and I had to rise and breakfast in the
darkness, reach the factory before it was daylight, and, with a short
interval for lunch, work till after dark. The hours hung heavily upon
me and in the work itself I took no pleasure; but the cloud had a
silver lining, as it gave me the feeling that I was doing something
for my world--our family. I have made millions since, but none of
those millions gave me such happiness as my first week's earnings. I
was now a helper of the family, a breadwinner, and no longer a total
charge upon my parents. Often had I heard my father's beautiful
singing of "The Boatie Rows" and often I longed to fulfill the last
lines of the verse:

"When Aaleck, Jock, and Jeanettie,
_Are up and got their lair_,[11]
They'll serve to gar the boatie row,
And lichten a' our care."

[Footnote 11: Education.]

I was going to make our tiny craft skim. It should be noted here that
Aaleck, Jock, and Jeanettie were first to get their education.
Scotland was the first country that required all parents, high or low,
to educate their children, and established the parish public schools.

Soon after this Mr. John Hay, a fellow-Scotch manufacturer of bobbins
in Allegheny City, needed a boy, and asked whether I would not go into
his service. I went, and received two dollars per week; but at first
the work was even more irksome than the factory. I had to run a small
steam-engine and to fire the boiler in the cellar of the bob