erful
influence upon them in after-life; and this, of itself, was an
education which probably far more than compensated for the boys' loss
of school-culture during their life at Moy. Mrs. Fairbairn span and
made all the children's clothes, as well as the blankets and sheeting;
and, while in the Highlands, she not only made her own and her
daughters' dresses, and her sons' jackets and trowsers, but her
husband's coats and waistcoats; besides helping her neighbours to cut
out their clothing for family wear.

One of William's duties at home was to nurse his younger brother Peter,
then a delicate child under two years old; and to relieve himself of
the labour of carrying him about, he began the construction of a little
waggon in which to wheel him. This was, however, a work of some
difficulty, as all the tools he possessed were only a knife, a gimlet,
and an old saw. With these implements, a piece of thin board, and a
few nails, he nevertheless contrived to make a tolerably serviceable
waggon-body. His chief difficulty consisted in making the wheels,
which he contrived to surmount by cutting sections from the stem of a
small alder-tree, and with a red-hot poker he bored the requisite holes
in their centres to receive the axle. The waggon was then mounted on
its four wheels, and to the great joy of its maker was found to answer
its purpose admirably. In it he wheeled his little brother--afterwards
well known as Sir Peter Fairbairn, mayor of Leeds--in various
directions about the farm, and sometimes to a considerable distance
from it; and the vehicle was regarded on the whole as a decided
success. His father encouraged him in his little feats of construction
of a similar kind, and he proceeded to make and rig miniature boats and
ships, and then miniature wind and water mills, in which last art he
acquired such expertness that he had sometimes five or six mills going
at a time. The machinery was all made with a knife, the water-spouts
being formed by the bark of a tree, and the millstones represented by
round discs of the same material. Such were the first constructive
efforts of the future millwright and engineer.

When the family removed to Allengrange in 1801, the boys were sent to
school at Munlachy, about a mile and a half distant from the farm. The
school was attended by about forty barefooted boys in tartan kilt's,
and about twenty girls, all of the poorer class. The schoolmaster was
one Donald Frazer, a go