Several other old people of Dunfermline told me stories of my grandfather.  Here is one of them: 

One Hogmanay night[2] an old wifey, quite a character in the village, being surprised by a disguised face suddenly thrust in at the window, looked up and after a moment’s pause exclaimed, “Oh, it’s jist that daft callant Andra Carnegie.”  She was right; my grandfather at seventy-five was out frightening his old lady friends, disguised like other frolicking youngsters.

[Footnote 2:  The 31st of December.]

I think my optimistic nature, my ability to shed trouble and to laugh through life, making “all my ducks swans,” as friends say I do, must have been inherited from this delightful old masquerading grandfather whose name I am proud to bear.[3] A sunny disposition is worth more than fortune.  Young people should know that it can be cultivated; that the mind like the body can be moved from the shade into sunshine.  Let us move it then.  Laugh trouble away if possible, and one usually can if he be anything of a philosopher, provided that self-reproach comes not from his own wrongdoing.  That always remains.  There is no washing out of these “damned spots.”  The judge within sits in the supreme court and can never be cheated.  Hence the grand rule of life which Burns gives: 

    “Thine own reproach alone do fear.”

[Footnote 3:  “There is no sign that Andrew, though he prospered in his wooing, was specially successful in acquisition of worldly gear.  Otherwise, however, he became an outstanding character not only in the village, but in the adjoining city and district.  A ‘brainy’ man who read and thought for himself he became associated with the radical weavers of Dunfermline, who in Patiemuir formed a meeting-place which they named a college (Andrew was the ‘Professor’ of it).” (Andrew Carnegie:  His Dunfermline Ties and Benefactions, by J.B.  Mackie, F.J.I.)]

This motto adopted early in life has been more to me than all the sermons I ever heard, and I have heard not a few, although I may admit resemblance to my old friend Baillie Walker in my mature years.  He was asked by his doctor about his sleep and replied that it was far from satisfactory, he was very wakeful, adding with a twinkle in his eye:  “But I get a bit fine doze i’ the kirk noo and then.”

On my mother’s side the grandfather was even more marked, for my grandfather Thomas Morrison was a friend of William Cobbett, a contributor to his “Register,” and in constant correspondence with him.  Even as I write, in Dunfermline old men who knew Grandfather Morrison speak of him as one of the finest orators and ablest men they have known.  He was publisher of “The Precursor,” a small edition it might be said of Cobbett’s “Register,” and thought to have been the first radical paper in Scotland.  I have read some of his writings, and in view of the importance now given to technical education, I think the most remarkable