This was a trying position for a boy to fill, and at that time I was not popular with the other boys, who resented my exemption from part of my legitimate work.  I was also taxed with being penurious in my habits—­mean, as the boys had it.  I did not spend my extra dimes, but they knew not the reason.  Every penny that I could save I knew was needed at home.  My parents were wise and nothing was withheld from me.  I knew every week the receipts of each of the three who were working—­my father, my mother, and myself.  I also knew all the expenditures.  We consulted upon the additions that could be made to our scanty stock of furniture and clothing and every new small article obtained was a source of joy.  There never was a family more united.

Day by day, as mother could spare a silver half-dollar, it was carefully placed in a stocking and hid until two hundred were gathered, when I obtained a draft to repay the twenty pounds so generously lent to us by her friend Mrs. Henderson.  That was a day we celebrated.  The Carnegie family was free from debt.  Oh, the happiness of that day!  The debt was, indeed, discharged, but the debt of gratitude remains that never can be paid.  Old Mrs. Henderson lives to-day.  I go to her house as to a shrine, to see her upon my visits to Dunfermline; and whatever happens she can never be forgotten. [As I read these lines, written some years ago, I moan, “Gone, gone with the others!” Peace to the ashes of a dear, good, noble friend of my mother’s.]

The incident in my messenger life which at once lifted me to the seventh heaven, occurred one Saturday evening when Colonel Glass was paying the boys their month’s wages.  We stood in a row before the counter, and Mr. Glass paid each one in turn.  I was at the head and reached out my hand for the first eleven and a quarter dollars as they were pushed out by Mr. Glass.  To my surprise he pushed them past me and paid the next boy.  I thought it was a mistake, for I had heretofore been paid first, but it followed in turn with each of the other boys.  My heart began to sink within me.  Disgrace seemed coming.  What had I done or not done?  I was about to be told that there was no more work for me.  I was to disgrace the family.  That was the keenest pang of all.  When all had been paid and the boys were gone, Mr. Glass took me behind the counter and said that I was worth more than the other boys, and he had resolved to pay me thirteen and a half dollars a month.

My head swam; I doubted whether I had heard him correctly.  He counted out the money.  I don’t know whether I thanked him; I don’t believe I did.  I took it and made one bound for the door and scarcely stopped until I got home.  I remember distinctly running or rather bounding from end to end of the bridge across the Allegheny River—­inside on the wagon track because the foot-walk was too narrow.  It was Saturday night.  I handed over to mother, who was the treasurer of the family, the eleven dollars and a quarter and said nothing about the remaining two dollars and a quarter in my pocket—­worth more to me then than all the millions I have made since.