notice, being designed only for his family. In like manner I intend to
tell my story, not as one posturing before the public, but as in the
midst of my own people and friends, tried and true, to whom I can
speak with the utmost freedom, feeling that even trifling incidents
may not be wholly destitute of interest for them.

To begin, then, I was born in Dunfermline, in the attic of the small
one-story house, corner of Moodie Street and Priory Lane, on the 25th
of November, 1835, and, as the saying is, "of poor but honest parents,
of good kith and kin." Dunfermline had long been noted as the center
of the damask trade in Scotland.[1] My father, William Carnegie, was a
damask weaver, the son of Andrew Carnegie after whom I was named.

[Footnote 1: The Eighteenth-Century Carnegies lived at the picturesque
hamlet of Patiemuir, two miles south of Dunfermline. The growing
importance of the linen industry in Dunfermline finally led the
Carnegies to move to that town.]

My Grandfather Carnegie was well known throughout the district for his
wit and humor, his genial nature and irrepressible spirits. He was
head of the lively ones of his day, and known far and near as the
chief of their joyous club--"Patiemuir College." Upon my return to
Dunfermline, after an absence of fourteen years, I remember being
approached by an old man who had been told that I was the grandson of
the "Professor," my grandfather's title among his cronies. He was the
very picture of palsied eld;

"His nose and chin they threatened ither."

As he tottered across the room toward me and laid his trembling hand