His parents were poor, and at the age of ten he was put to work in the factory as a piecer, that his earnings might aid his mother in the struggle with the wolf which had followed the family from the island that bore its name.  After serving a number of years as a piecer, he was promoted to be a spinner.  Greatly to his mother’s delight, the first half crown he ever earned was laid by him in her lap.  Livingstone has told us that with a part of his first week’s wages he purchased Ruddiman’s Rudiments of Latin, and pursued the study of that language with unabated ardor for many years afterward at an evening class which had been opened between the hours of eight and ten.  “The dictionary part of my labors was followed up till twelve o’clock, or later, if my mother did not interfere by jumping up and snatching the books out of my hands.  I had to be back in the factory by six in the morning, and continue my work, with intervals for breakfast and dinner, till eight o’clock at night.  I read in this way many of the classical authors, and knew Virgil and Horace better at sixteen than I do now[4].”

[Footnote 4:  Missionary Travels, p. 8.]

In his reading, he tells us that he devoured all the books that came into his hands but novels, and that his plan was to place the book on a portion of the spinning-jenny, so that he could catch sentence after sentence as he passed at his work.  The labor of attending to the wheels was great, for the improvements in spinning machinery that have made it self-acting had not then been introduced.  The utmost interval that Livingstone could have for reading at one time was less than a minute.

The thirst for reading so early shown was greatly stimulated by his father’s example.  Neil Livingstone, while fond of the old Scottish theology, was deeply interested in the enterprise of the nineteenth century, or, as he called it, “the progress of the world,” and endeavored to interest his family in it too.  Any books of travel, and especially of missionary enterprise, that he could lay his hands on, he eagerly read.  Some publications of the Tract Society, called the Weekly Visitor, the Child’s Companion and Teacher’s Offering, were taken in, and were much enjoyed by his son David, especially the papers of “Old Humphrey.”  Novels were not admitted into the house, in accordance with the feeling prevalent in religious circles.  Neil Livingstone had also a fear of books of science, deeming them unfriendly to Christianity; his son instinctively repudiated that feeling, though it was some time before the works of Thomas Dick, of Broughty-Ferry, enabled him to see clearly, what to him was of vital significance, that religion and science were not necessarily hostile, but rather friendly to each other.