I remember that shortly after this I began to learn what poverty meant.  Dreadful days came when my father took the last of his webs to the great manufacturer, and I saw my mother anxiously awaiting his return to know whether a new web was to be obtained or that a period of idleness was upon us.  It was burnt into my heart then that my father, though neither “abject, mean, nor vile,” as Burns has it, had nevertheless to

    “Beg a brother of the earth
    To give him leave to toil.”

And then and there came the resolve that I would cure that when I got to be a man.  We were not, however, reduced to anything like poverty compared with many of our neighbors.  I do not know to what lengths of privation my mother would not have gone that she might see her two boys wearing large white collars, and trimly dressed.

In an incautious moment my parents had promised that I should never be sent to school until I asked leave to go.  This promise I afterward learned began to give them considerable uneasiness because as I grew up I showed no disposition to ask.  The schoolmaster, Mr. Robert Martin, was applied to and induced to take some notice of me.  He took me upon an excursion one day with some of my companions who attended school, and great relief was experienced by my parents when one day soon afterward I came and asked for permission to go to Mr. Martin’s school.[8] I need not say the permission was duly granted.  I had then entered upon my eighth year, which subsequent experience leads me to say is quite early enough for any child to begin attending school.

[Footnote 8:  It was known as Rolland School.]

The school was a perfect delight to me, and if anything occurred which prevented my attendance I was unhappy.  This happened every now and then because my morning duty was to bring water from the well at the head of Moodie Street.  The supply was scanty and irregular.  Sometimes it was not allowed to run until late in the morning and a score of old wives were sitting around, the turn of each having been previously secured through the night by placing a worthless can in the line.  This, as might be expected, led to numerous contentions in which I would not be put down even by these venerable old dames.  I earned the reputation of being “an awfu’ laddie.”  In this way I probably developed the strain of argumentativeness, or perhaps combativeness, which has always remained with me.

In the performance of these duties I was often late for school, but the master, knowing the cause, forgave the lapses.  In the same connection I may mention that I had often the shop errands to run after school, so that in looking back upon my life I have the satisfaction of feeling that I became useful to my parents even at the early age of ten.  Soon after that the accounts of the various people who dealt with the shop were entrusted to my keeping so that I became acquainted, in a small way, with business affairs even in childhood.