emergency--my mother--to step forward and endeavor to repair the
family fortune. She opened a small shop in Moodie Street and
contributed to the revenues which, though slender, nevertheless at
that time sufficed to keep us in comfort and "respectable."

I remember that shortly after this I began to learn what poverty
meant. Dreadful days came when my father took the last of his webs to
the great manufacturer, and I saw my mother anxiously awaiting his
return to know whether a new web was to be obtained or that a period
of idleness was upon us. It was burnt into my heart then that my
father, though neither "abject, mean, nor vile," as Burns has it, had
nevertheless to

"Beg a brother of the earth
To give him leave to toil."

And then and there came the resolve that I would cure that when I got
to be a man. We were not, however, reduced to anything like poverty
compared with many of our neighbors. I do not know to what lengths of
privation my mother would not have gone that she might see her two
boys wearing large white collars, and trimly dressed.

In an incautious moment my parents had promised that I should never be
sent to school until I asked leave to go. This promise I afterward
learned began to give them considerable uneasiness because as I grew
up I showed no disposition to ask. The schoolmaster, Mr. Robert
Martin, was applied to and induced to take some notice of me. He took
me upon an excursion one day with some of my companions who attended
school, and great relief was experienced by my parents when one day
soon afterward I came and asked for permission to go to Mr. Martin's