I treasure the remembrance of this plan as the earliest evidence of organizing power upon the development of which my material success in life has hung—­a success not to be attributed to what I have known or done myself, but to the faculty of knowing and choosing others who did know better than myself.  Precious knowledge this for any man to possess.  I did not understand steam machinery, but I tried to understand that much more complicated piece of mechanism—­man.  Stopping at a small Highland inn on our coaching trip in 1898, a gentleman came forward and introduced himself.  He was Mr. MacIntosh, the great furniture manufacturer of Scotland—­a fine character as I found out afterward.  He said he had ventured to make himself known as he was one of the boys who had gathered, and sometimes he feared “conveyed,” spoil for the rabbits, and had “one named after him.”  It may be imagined how glad I was to meet him—­the only one of the rabbit boys I have met in after-life.  I hope to keep his friendship to the last and see him often. [As I read this manuscript to-day, December 1, 1913, I have a very precious note from him, recalling old times when we were boys together.  He has a reply by this time that will warm his heart as his note did mine.]

With the introduction and improvement of steam machinery, trade grew worse and worse in Dunfermline for the small manufacturers, and at last a letter was written to my mother’s two sisters in Pittsburgh stating that the idea of our going to them was seriously entertained—­not, as I remember hearing my parents say, to benefit their own condition, but for the sake of their two young sons.  Satisfactory letters were received in reply.  The decision was taken to sell the looms and furniture by auction.  And my father’s sweet voice sang often to mother, brother, and me: 

    “To the West, to the West, to the land of the free,
    Where the mighty Missouri rolls down to the sea;
    Where a man is a man even though he must toil
    And the poorest may gather the fruits of the soil.”

The proceeds of the sale were most disappointing.  The looms brought hardly anything, and the result was that twenty pounds more were needed to enable the family to pay passage to America.  Here let me record an act of friendship performed by a lifelong companion of my mother—­who always attracted stanch friends because she was so stanch herself—­Mrs. Henderson, by birth Ella Ferguson, the name by which she was known in our family.  She boldly ventured to advance the needful twenty pounds, my Uncles Lauder and Morrison guaranteeing repayment.  Uncle Lauder also lent his aid and advice, managing all the details for us, and on the 17th day of May, 1848, we left Dunfermline.  My father’s age was then forty-three, my mother’s thirty-three.  I was in my thirteenth year, my brother Tom in his fifth year—­a beautiful white-haired child with lustrous black eyes, who everywhere attracted attention.