savings through starting, along with others, an East Lothian Bank,
because the local banker had been ill used by the British Linen
Company. He put in only 1,000 pounds; but was liable for all, and, as many
of his fellow shareholders were defaulters, it cost 15,000 pounds before
all was over, and if it had not been that he left the farm in the capable
hands of Aunt Margaret, there would have been little or nothing left for
the family. When he had a stroke of paralysis he wanted to turn over
Thornton Loch, the only farm he then had, to his eldest son, but there
were three daughters, and one of them said she would like to carry it
on, and she did so. She was the most successful farmer in the country
for 30 years, and then she transferred it to a nephew. The capacity for
business of my Aunt Margaret, the wit and charm of my brilliant Aunt
Mary, and the sound judgment and accurate memory of my own dear mother,
showed me early that women were fit to share in the work of this world,
and that to make the world pleasant for men was not their only mission.
My father's sister Mary was also a remarkable and saintly woman, though
I do not think she was such a born teacher as Miss Phin. When my father
was a little boy, not 12 years old, an uncle from Jamaica came home for
a visit. He saw his sister Janet a dying woman, with a number of
delicate-looking children, and he offered to take David with him and
treat him like his own son. No objections were made. The uncle was
supposed to be well-to-do, and he was unmarried, but he took fever and
died, and was found to be not rich but insolvent. The boy could read
and write, and he got something to do on a plantation till his father
sent money to pay his passage home. He must have been supposed to be
worth something, for he got a cask of rum for his wages, which was
shipped home, and when the duty had been paid was drunk in the doctor's
household. But the boy had been away only 21 months, and he returned to
find his mother dead. and two or three little brothers and sisters dead
and buried, and his father married again to his mother's cousin,