If, Therefore,
Any Of You Or Any Of Your Children Should Take To Dishonest Ways,
It Will Not Be Because It Runs In Our Blood:
It does not belong to you.
I leave this precept with you:
Be honest." If, therefore,
in the following pages I fall into any errors, I hope they will be dealt with
as honest mistakes, and not as indicating that I have forgotten
our ancient motto. This event took place at a time when the Highlanders,
according to Macaulay, were much like the Cape Caffres,
and any one, it was said, could escape punishment for cattle-stealing
by presenting a share of the plunder to his chieftain.
Our ancestors were Roman Catholics; they were made Protestants
by the laird coming round with a man having a yellow staff,
which would seem to have attracted more attention than his teaching,
for the new religion went long afterward, perhaps it does so still,
by the name of "the religion of the yellow stick".
Finding his farm in Ulva insufficient to support a numerous family,
my grandfather removed to Blantyre Works, a large cotton manufactory
on the beautiful Clyde, above Glasgow; and his sons,
having had the best education the Hebrides afforded,
were gladly received as clerks by the proprietors, Monteith and Co.
He himself, highly esteemed for his unflinching honesty, was employed
in the conveyance of large sums of money from Glasgow to the works,
and in old age was, according to the custom of that company, pensioned off,
so as to spend his declining years in ease and comfort.
Our uncles all entered his majesty's service during the last French war,
either as soldiers or sailors; but my father remained at home,
and, though too conscientious ever to become rich as a small tea-dealer,
by his kindliness of manner and winning ways he made the heart-strings
of his children twine around him as firmly as if he had possessed,
and could have bestowed upon them, every worldly advantage.
He reared his children in connection with the Kirk of Scotland -
a religious establishment which has been an incalculable blessing
to that country - but he afterward left it, and during the last
twenty years of his life held the office of deacon of an independent church
in Hamilton, and deserved my lasting gratitude and homage for presenting me,
from my infancy, with a continuously consistent pious example,
such as that ideal of which is so beautifully and truthfully portrayed
in Burns's "Cottar's Saturday Night". He died in February, 1856,
in peaceful hope of that mercy which we all expect through
the death of our Lord and Savior. I was at the time on my way below Zumbo,
expecting no greater pleasure in this country than sitting by our cottage fire
and telling him my travels. I revere his memory.
The earliest recollection of my mother recalls a picture so often seen
among the Scottish poor - that of the anxious housewife striving to make
both ends meet.
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