a self-restraint that admitted no stimulant within the door, and that
faced bravely and steadily all the burdens of life; a love of books that
showed the presence of a cultivated taste, with a fear of God that
dignified the life which it moulded and controlled. To the last David
Livingstone was proud of the class from which he sprang. When the
highest in the land were showering compliments on him, he was writing to
his old friends of "my own order, the honest poor," and trying, by
schemes of colonization and otherwise, to promote their benefit. He
never had the least hankering for any title or distinction that would
have seemed to lift him out of his own class; and it was with perfect
sincerity that on the tombstone which he placed over the resting-place
of his parents in the cemetery of Hamilton, he expressed his feelings in
these words, deliberately refusing to change the "and" of the last line
into "but":

TO SHOW THE RESTING-PLACE OF

NEIL LIVINGSTONE,
AND AGNES HUNTER, HIS WIFE,

AND TO EXPEESS THE THANKFULNESS TO GOD
OF THEIR CHILDREN,

JOHN, DAVID, JANET, CHARLES, AND AGNES,

FOR POOR AND PIOUS PARENTS.

David Livingstone's birthday was the 19th March, 1813. Of his early
boyhood there is little to say, except that he was a favorite at home.
The children's games were merrier when he was among them, and the