REMINISCENCES-1

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Aberdeen Scotland & USA
Surname/tag: James_Hall_Paterson_Life

Charlotte, N.C. August 23, 1933 REMINISCENCES

I got the idea that, by writing down some of the incidents occurring to me, or coming within the scope of my knowledge during my life time, it would be good practice typing, as I have just at this late date started to learn that accompl-ishment, so after attaining a certain degree of proficiency, two of my best friends J. Milton Todd and Mrs. Maude R. Farr, insisted that I should put it in permanent form, but I feel, that much of the narrative is some-what commonplace, yet, there may be some matter contained in it that will be interesting to some who may read it in the years to come.

No doubt the incidents related about my life in Scotland where my boy-hood and young man-hood was spent will be of some interest to my son Kent, who was born and reared in this country, and is a North Carolinian by birth, Mt. Airy, N.C. being his birth place, and my descedants if any, may percance pore over it and ponder on the many changes that have taken place from my time on earth to theirs, as for its literary value, I have a strong conviction that it contains little of that.

I am getting a good bit of pleasure writing it, even if the readers should fail to do so, because it is a pleasant pastime for me, now that physical misfortune, and, shall I say old age?, has rendered me incapable of engaging in most kinds of work, and in these times especially there is not work enough for all the young men and women to do, as never in the history of modern times has there been any thing to compare with the industrial inactivity that has prevailed for the last four years past.

Another reason why I find pleasure in it, is perhaps due to my age, as it is said old people dwell much in the past, and how fortunate it is that the good things I have experienced stand out more vividly in my memory than the evil; Good and evil are ever present in our lives, but the Good will ultimately triumph, of that I have not the slightest doubt.

I have at different times through-out my life started to keep a diary, but like many others who have done the same I failed to keep it up, so every thing I have written about is from my memory, which I have been told, and I believe it, is very good. I can remember some things as far back as sixty years ago, and perhaps a little longer than that, and I am sixty-four and a half years old, in fact on second thought, I was exactly that yesterday October 11th, I have also been good at remembering dates, but that does not mean that I am infallible in that line, so I will not vouch for all the dates mentioned in my story, so now that I have this introduction off my mind I will proceed with it.

James Hall Paterson.

REMINISCENCES

I was born at No. 7 Saint Andrew St. Aberdeen, Scotland, about three blocks from the center of the city, it was a house occupied by six or eight other tenants, my parents rented one room, which as I remember, was quite large, and it needed to be, because before we moved from there, which was five years after I came on the scene, there were two more added to our number, making six of us all told. I had one brother five years older than my-self, the two younger than me were girls. Our names ranging from oldest to youngest, are William, who is now dead, my-self James, and my two sisters, Isabella and Jane, we were known as Willie, Jamie or as some spell it Jimmy, Isa and Jean or Jeannie. There were two other boys and one girl older than me whom I never saw, as they died in infancy, their names were George, James, and Helen, that was two of us who had been given the same first name, but we were named after different men, my brother who died before I was born was named after a brother of my father's, and I was named after my mother's only brother, his name was James Hall, so I got his full name while my brother who died had only the one first name, the other of my parents near relatives, that was a custom more common than it is now.

My father was a carter, but would have been called a teamster in this country, he was employed by a woolen mill concern, at one pound per week, which is equivalent to approximately four dollars and eighty seven cents, so my mother had to be very thrifty to make ends meet, but it was as good wages as any man working at unskilled labor got at that time, and it was a regular income, for I never knew my father to be out of a job, until the last few months before he died, and that was because of the illness that caused his death. My mother always managed to give us wholesome food and was able to clothe us, so we never failed to appear respectable at Sunday school and church, she sat up many a night when all the rest of us were asleep, making or making over a garment, mending, and darning, or knitting new stockings for us, and in this connection I might be safe in saying she never bought a pair of stockings for any of us in her life, she used to not only knit for us but for others. Reading and knitting were her two hobbies until she died at the ripe old age of 92.

Our room was on the corner of the house, and there were two windows looking out on Saint Andrew St. and one or maybe two over-looking Jopp's Lane, a street at right angle from Saint Andrew St. I enjoyed looking out of those windows at the activity going on in the streets many a day when I couldn't go out, which was most of the time as the street was the only place for children to play. The window over-looking Jopp's Lane gave us a good view of a stone yard, and I liked to watch the stone-cutters at work, not dreaming even at the time that I would some day be earning my livelihood at that trade my-self. My grand-mother and Aunt Jean lived in a house just a few doors down the street from us, and they used to spend many a Sunday after-noon watching the passers-by, many of whom they knew, so I in time came to know many of them by sight my-self.

One of my earliest recollections happening about that period of my life was the death of an Uncle John who was a half brother of my mother's, I believe I was between three and four years old then, I can remember some other things that must have occurred about that time, and one of the outstanding events was a trip that my father took me and my brother Willie on, to visit his father who lived on a farm in the parish of Old Deer. I can remember nothing about the train journey, either going or coming; only three things stand out in my memory as clearly as though they had happened yesterday, the first was crossing the Moss of Slampton, which I presume was a nearer way to reach the farm from the railway station. It was a peat moss, or bog as the Irish call it, and by the way I think there are more of them in Ireland; peat is decayed forest vegetation and the site of the mosses had many thousands of years ago been covered by forests of trees which are now lying quite a number of feet deep in low marshy land, the farmers dig out the peat in oblong squares some-what larger than an ordinary sized brick, they are quite soggy with water when first dug out, so they are stacked up to dry in the sun, then carted home to the home-stead and stacked up in a pile as big as a house and the same shape, the top of the pile sloping on two sides just like the roof of a house, in order that it will shed the moisture well when it rains. Peat is a very dark brown color, and as will be inferred by what I have already said, is composed of partially decayed twigs and I might say wholly decayed leaves, it makes a capital fire, sending out a fervent heat, with very little smoke or flame, and is used in all parts of Scotland's rural districts where it can be found. To me the odor of peat (reek) Scots for smoke, is very pleasant, I think to most Scotsmen a whiff of it in their nostrils would bring with it a longing to once again be tramping over some dearly remembered bit of country familiar to them in by-gone days. Perhaps you have heard Scots whisky has the flavor of peat reek, as that fuel used to be largely used in the distilling process. Now to get back to the Moss of Slampton which my father and brother and I were crossing, Father was carrying me in his arms and I was gazing in terror down at the bogs and the dark brown water which filled them crying all the way across the moss with fear that my father might slip and fall into one of them, I know it had been a relief to me, when we finally got across, and I have no doubt my father had been rather glad, the next thing a remember was being in the farm yard and seeing my grandmother milking a cow and that is all I remember about her, it was the first and last time I saw her. The third was the house and seeing an old man sitting by the fire-side and that was my grand-father, I had never seen him before, and never saw him again, it was not long after that when he died, I don't think my father ever saw him alive after that time, I remember him going to the funeral and I believe that was in 1875. That is all that I remember about that whole trip, I have wondered some times why I remembered nothing about the train ride as that must have been quit a a novelty in my young life, and I have concluded that I must have slept most of the journey both ways, I have noticed that a train ride has a soporific effect not only on children but adults as well.

When I was four years old my mother used to let me play in the sand which the workmen were using to lay the track for the first street cars that were run in Aberdeen, that is sixty years ago, the city at that time had about one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. That was the beginning of street car transportation service in and marked a mew era in the city's progress, the rails they ran over was called the tram-way and the cars were tram cars and of course at that time they were drawn by horses, Previous to the time I am writing about their was what now seems to be a quaint custom of the night watch-men or policemen as they are now called, calling out the hours of the night and the condition of the weather, then we had a town drummer who made his rounds, beating his drum to attract the attention of the people to what ever item of news he had to tell, or advertising any local event that was to take place in the community, I remember he wore a red swallow tailed coat and a high hat, as his uniform, and that old custom died when I was a small boy, I suppose the cause of its demise was on account of the increasing number of news papers, at that time Aberdeen had, I think two daily papers, the Aberdeen Free Press and the Aberdeen Journal, but common folk were not able to subscribe for them. Most poor people who were able or cared to subscribe, took the Peoples Journal, a weekly paper published in Dundee, Scotland which gave news of political interest and events happening all over Great Britain, the Publishers divided their territory into zones of several counties in each zone and a section of the paper was devoted to carrying the news of the particular section for which that edition was designed. The Peoples Journal at that time was printed on both sides of a large sheet and folded four times, the publication still lives, but is now in tablet form, and I believe it is still as popular as ever, it goes all over the world where ever some Scotsmen are, and I would like to know where they are not to be found in greater or lesser numbers.

June 4th was at that time the flitting term that means the day on which people, after making up their minds to move from one house to another, and having previously entered in to a contract with some other land-lord to rent a place from him for the ensuing six months, they then flitted as it is phrased in Scotland, so on June 4th 1874 when I was five years old, and just a year after my sister Jean was born, my parents decided to move to a larger house, as the one room we were living in became too small for a family of six. The system of renting houses is much different, from that obtaining in this country, in that one deciding to move at the Whit-sunday term, which is in June, makes a verbal contract to stay a year with the privelege of moving in six months at the Martinmas term, but it is very rare to see a flitting at that term, as most people stay a year. These terms I have mentioned, are the times for accounts to be settled and many contracts are entered into by business men. Farmers also hire their help on a certain date about Whit-sunday, and Martinmas. The literal meaning of Whit-sunday is White Sunday and it is the 7th Sunday and 50th day after Easter, so these account settling days and flitting days bear no relation to the religious aspect of the days, but I presume the manes of the terms originated because of there close proximity to those church Festival days. It is an ancient religious festival, observed in commemoration of the descent of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost. Martinmas is a Mass Church Service, celebrating the Feast of Saint Martin, November 11th. Like all other church festivals held by the catholic church they are only a name now with the great majority of the people of Scotland, as a very small minority are of that faith, and old manners and customs remain a long time, the fact that most of the people who first settled this country, were Protestants they naturally had dropped the use of describing the different seasons by the old system of using that kind of phraseology.

Now for the moving of flitting, my mother had rented a house of two rooms in a tenement at No. 60 Gordon St. it was an attic apartment, one of the rooms facing the street and the other on the back the window of which over-looked the back yard, and also the back yards of the houses in the street next to us, those houses were occupied by people higher in the social scale than us on Gordon St. as also were the people on the street opposite the front of our house, so you see there was an upper crust on both sides of us, thus placing us in the middle, so that we could hardly be truthfully called the lower crust.

My father moved us with his horse and lorry, a flat bottomed vehicle, with low sides about four inches high, all the furniture, which you will imagine couldn't have been much, was piled on it and securely fastened on with rope, and to me it seemed quite high at the top of the load, Willie and I rode on the top of it with my father and that was one of the greatest adventures of my life so far, my mother walked over with my two little sisters who were respectively age three and one years, at that time we had a brown wicker baby carriage or coach we called it, and I remember she also carried the clock.

That was the last summer of my life that I didn't have to dread going back to school, and I don't remember much about any thing, except that I enjoyed it more than I did St. Andrews St. it was a very agreeable change, as I could get out to play more, on account of there being so little traffic on that street, there being no out-let for vehicular traffic at our end, there being only a narrow lane for pedestrians, there was a house at the end facing directly up the street, with a small grocery shop in the basement.

On Monday morning the first week of August my mother took me by the hand and escorted me to Mary Well St. School, and introduced me to the head Mistress, Miss Johnson, who put me in a class, which was taught by a teacher named Miss Jeannie, and began the study of the a b c, or the penny book, this teacher and Miss Kelly are all I can remember, I think I graduated into her class when Miss Jeannie got through with me.

I spent two years in that department, and then was sent up stairs where all the teachers were men. I stayed there one year when my mother decided I wasn't learning anything, and had lost practically one entire year. There was too much foolishness carried on for any one to learn very much. Mr. Maver the head master was an old man with a gray beard, so sparely built that it gained him the nickname of Skinny Maver. The cane that he used to punish the boys who misbehaved wore out several times while I was there, and when he needed a new one he would send one of the boys to buy it, and generally it would be the boy that he was about to punish, that always seemed funny to us. The teachers were all young fellows and much of the time they were bent only in having fun, one of my teachers named Adam Scroggie used to while away the time telling us stories, which often would be some narrative about some personal exploit, that young as we were we found it hard to swallow. Another of my teachers was Jim Crow, he was on the same order as Scroggie, the only thing that stands out in my memory with regard to him was his fondness for locust beans, some of us boys used to keep him supplied, when there would be a cargo of them being unloaded, the stevedores would drop some carrying them on their backs from the ship to the dock, and there would always be some boys ready to pounce on them. Jim used to chew away on them in the after-noons while we were doing such lessons as he gave us to do, it tickled us to watch him drop the seeds out of his mouth, they had a way of bouncing a time of two on his vest and knees before reaching the floor which got to be quite fascinating, as such simple things will be to boys. Another one whose hands I came through was Fred Finney, he was no better than the others I have mentioned, his favorite pastime was whistling, and he used to get all of us whistling tunes in a classroom off by our selves, and of course that was fun for us as we personally were not so much interested at that time storing our minds with knowledge, especially as we were not made to do it. There was a drill master that came to that school twice every week who put us through manual exercises, and military company drill, I liked that very much, and it was good for us. The drill master was an old military man, and been a sergeant I believe, at least that is what was said among the boys, and of course that settled the matter.

At the end of the summer's play as the school vacation was called, my mother had decided to take my sister Isa and I away from Mary Well St. School, so on the first day of school, she took us both to Frederic St. School as it was commonly called, the proper name of it was Dr. Bell's School, it and another school was endowed by this Doctor, just what profession he was Doctor of I haven't the slightest idea, but he had been a rich man, and bestowed this benevolence, many years before my day, when education was not a governmental function. Schools in Great Britain prior to 1870 were supervised and largely maintained by different church organizations, and partly by the fees paid by scholars. The School board act was passed for England in 1870, and for Scotland in 1871, and from then on became a governmental function, and every child that was physically able had to be educated, and refusal to send children to school was punishable by law, I don't know why there were two separate acts for the two countries, unless it was because conditions were different, Scottish law and English law are not the same in many respects, each country has laws suitable to their own needs and interests. One thing is certain according to what is recorded by reliable writers, and from what I have heard older people say, at the time I was a boy, the Scottish people did not stand so much need of an act of parliament to enforce education upon the whole population of children in the land as the English people did. The common people of England opposed it very strenuously in the industrial communities, for the reason that it would deprive them of the wages of the little children employed in the factories and coal mines, I remember hearing that those people had a slogan of something like this, "We don't want education, all we want is our beef and beer", I think likely there had been some opposition in Scotland also, but never anything like that, the truth is the mass of people Scotland has always had the name of having a greater desire for knowledge than the masses in England, and it is a wall known fact to all observers, and to people who have traveled extensively that Scots man forge their way to the top of their trades and professions in much greater numbers, than do the men of most any other country. I could site many proofs of this but you will not take the trouble to do so, suffice it for me to refer you to the records of literature and history, and there you will find the roster of Scots who stand high in the list of the famous. It has been my own personal observation, in the trade I learned that the greatest proportion of Superintendents and fore men were men of Scottish birth, that perhaps is not as true now as it was before America put restrictions on the number of immigrants to her soil.

My first day in school of Frederick St. was a very enjoyable occasion, as it was a sort of a gala day, on account of the Head Mistress of the school getting married during the summer play to Henry Gray one of the largest drapery merchants in Aberdeen, that is a dry goods merchant in this country. All the children got a bag of assorted candies and an apple each, and all the teachers made us do that day was sing, to celebrate the wedding I suppose, then we got our lists of new books needed, and then home for a half holiday in the afternoon. The school was much further away from home than Mary Wall St. it may have been a little over a mile, I think we got an hour and a half for dinner, and in good weather we managed to go home, but stormy days we carried a lunch with us which we were allowed to eat in school. On days like that it was great fun, after we ate we used to play games of different kinds until time to go to studying again. The tuition fees were not quite so high as the other public schools, I had been paying three pense a week before and now it was only two pense, three pense is what I should have said that I paid prior to that. Two pennies equals four cents and three equals six, not very much you may think but where there were large families going to school, it meant a good deal of money out of a small income such as ours and many others had. Several others went to this school from our neighborhood, there was Bill Fraser, his mother was a highland woman and spoke the gaelic language, but could speak in our dialect or rather she spoke with a mixture of English and our Dialect, the highland folk had a very soft accent, then there were Alec Mitchell and Fanny and Willie Hay and his sister, making seven of us in all with my sister Isa and I. We used to have plenty fun going and coming from school and when we went home to dinner we were apt to linger too long on the way going back, and got punished sometimes when we were late. One time we were so late that we were afraid to go in and instead of facing a punishment as we should have done we strolled down to the harbor to see the ships, and other interesting sights that are always to be seen among the sea faring men and stevedores. That was the only time I was ever absent with out authority, in other wards that I had ever played hooky, and I felt rather guilty over it, and of course my mother found out about it, and even if she hadn't I guess I would have confessed it rather than have it weigh on my conscience, as it was doing, many a boy committed the offense and some of them were habitual offenders, but it seemed in the nature of a crime to me and it never happened again. I think my mother let me off with a scolding and some good advice, as it was my first offense in the line and the last.

Gordon St. was close to an undeveloped part of the city, and just a short distance from this section which in the short space of time we lived there, seven years to be exact, was practically all built up, but at the time we moved there it was partly cultivated and partly wild land, there was a narrow burn or creek that ran through it on its way to the river Dee. This was a fine play ground for us kids who lived close by, and many a happy time we had there, and when the carpenters were working on the buildings they allowed us to pick up scraps of waste material which we would carry home to our mothers for fire wood or kindling rather, and that perhaps saved us from a licking for staying away from home so long, when we were needed to ho on an errand or something.

As I said before there was very little traffic on our street, for there was not much danger of being run over, but one day when I was about eight or nine years old, another boy and I were racing down the street, at the back of us, and I was ahead unfortunately for me, because just as I reached the corner of another street intersecting the one we were on a horse and cab reached it at precisely the same time with the result that I ran full tilt into the horse's side, and the wheels of the cab ran over one of my feet. There was a lady in the cab, so she got out and took me in beside her and took me home to my mother, and of course she got quite a scare I had been brought back hurt in a cab. I was not badly hurt however, and the lady gave me a six pense, so things were not so bad after all, and I had also got my first ride in a cab, which was quite swank. That sun of money is equal to twelve cents, and is about the same size as a dime, my mother got the most good of that as I had to give it to her, but she would give me a small part of any money I made to keep to myself.

There was one time that I fell before a temptation to withhold part of some money I had earned and got from a lady, who had hired another boy and my-self to carry quite a number of buckets of water from the back yard in-to her house, and when the work was finished she paid us a sixpense each, my sin consisted of telling my mother a lie, to the effect that I got only three pense, just the half of what I actually got. The other boy did the same and we bought some thing to eat with it of course, this was a sad departure from the straight and narrow path, and my conscience immediately began to speak to me in no uncertain terms. This incident happened on a Saturday, and until Sunday night late in the night I had no peace of soul, I lay in bed Sunday night in perfect misery, and had visions of dying before morning and going straight to hell when at last I could stand the torment no longer, I got out of bed in the dark and went to my mother's bed-side, and confessed what I had done. It must have been past mid-night when I decided to do this, and every one in the house was asleep, my mother was very kind, and I gathered that she was happy that I told her about it, any way she sent me back to bed a very happy boy who had learned a valuable lesson, for I never tried any more tricks of that kind, but was satisfied to take what my mother voluntarily gave me, out of any money I was able to earn.

In those days there was no such thing as organized play for children, as there is to-day in this country, I don't know how it is in Great Britain, but never-the-less there was no lack of play carried on with-out any supervision, and we had a great variety of games. Every winter we had a good deal of snow, and sometimes it would lie for several weeks at a time before it came a thaw. How glad we used to be when the first snow came, and what royal battles we had snow-balling, then we would make slides that were as slick as an ice covered pond, and what fine sliding we had with our tacketty boots, the tackets being hobnails. It always froze enough to make the ice on the ponds thick enough for skating, and there was a pond not far from where we lived, so one day my brother and I were there having a fine time when all of a sudden one of the boys fell through the ice. It looked rather serious but fortunately he managed to get out, and a most ludicrous sight he was standing shivering and the water running from him in streams; none of the boys could keep from laughing hilariously at him, even though we knew we had just escaped witnessing a tragedy, and to make the situation still funnier he wanted to know what the H--- we were laughing at like damn fools, it was a scream then but some of his chums got him started for home, and I never saw him again that I can remember. I never had a good pair of skates when I was a boy, so had to do a lot of extemporizing with any kind of a make-shift, from just a plain stick of wood tied on with a piece of thick twine to some ill fitting pair of skates with out straps, and tied on with twine or the piece of an old belt, then when they would work loose with the strain I used to jam pieces of stick or cork between the twine and my shoe to tighten them up. We envied the boy's whose parents were well enough off to buy them good skates that fitted and never gave any trouble about coming off, and throwing the skater sprawling on ice.

When the March winds began to blow and the snow all melted, was the time for Kite and dragon flying, and every where, in open spaces could be seen boys enjoying that sport. I never had any knack of making a kite that could fly, I could make one after a fashion, but never was able to balance them properly, so that would fly steadily. The bays at Gordon's College used to make them, for sale, and I bought one or two of them and got good results, some boys were masters at making them. It was always great sport to me and how I used to like to send paper messengers up the string. After the kite season was over, would come time for marbles, and spinning tops; I was never an expert at marbles either and usually lost mine when playing for keeps, my brother was a much better player than I, and some times he would give me enough to set me in to a game. Tops were rare fun too, I have never seen the system in this country that we had of spinning them; we set the top spinning with a twist of the fingers and then swipe it with thrummles or thummels, that was an instrument made from a piece of rope, unraveled at the end, and some times fastened to a piece of wood for a handle but very often we just used the unraveled end to handle it by, after the top was started spinning we hit it as hard or as lightly as we pleased with the thummles and in that way we would keep it spinning down the side walk as long as we pleased or something happened accidentally to stop it. We also spun them with a string like the way it is done in this country, but there was not the same fun in that for us. There were quite a number of different shapes of tops some of them slender and some bulky and short, the slender ones we called pears and the others were bumblers, the pears or peeries were the most popular, as they were the most graceful when spinning, the grooves for the cord to spin them with each had a name beginning at the bottom groove thus, a laird, a lord, a lily, a leaf, a piper, a drummer, a hangman, a thief, and the name of the top groove was the name of the top. These games would be popular for three or four weeks, and then some other would come in its turn to take their places. The girls had their games of hop-scotch, rope skipping and others peculiar to them-selves, and often us boys used to join them especially if it was the skipping rope or hop-scotch. We played Rounders which in Aberdeen was called Glesca Hoosie and to interpret into English meant Glasgow House, that game I understand is the crude origin of baseball, I know it must be, judging by the similarity. Then their were a number of other games that were played in all seasons, such as I spy, Smuggle the gig, Key Howe, Fitna, mumble peg, I spy was some thing like Key Howe, and the English for that is Hide and Seek, I believe that is played by boys of all civilized countries. The game of Smuggle the gig, was simply any number of boys engaged in the game, going into a huddle and one of them would secrete the gig, which was any small object, about his person, then the boy who was it had to hunt until he found it, and some times that was a difficult job if there were very many boys in the game. Fitna was no other than leap frog, but how it came by that name is to me an unsolved mystery. There was one game we used to play that was lots of fun, but I have forgotten the name of it, one boy would stand with his back to the wall, and another would stoop over, and hold himself up by taking hold of the one against the wall, then one of the other boys would jump a-straddle his back and hold up a number of his fingers and of the same time calling out these words, becky becky beck beck, how many fingers do I hold up, and the one the stooping posture who couldn't see guessed, and if he failed to guess correctly one of the other boys jumped on and repeated the same question, and so on until he guessed right. We also went n for athletic sports just like the athletes, such as the standing jump, running jump, high jump, hop step and jump, putting the stone throwing the hammer, and wrestling. I have never seen the boys in this country play such a diversity of games as I have mentioned and I am sure I haven't named all of them, we seemed to have little need for trained supervisors as we learned from the elder boys, and the spirit of fair play came natural to us, and if it wasn't we soon had it whipped into us. The children in this country play all right but it has always seemed to me that they limit themselves to too few different games, baseball and football takes up most of their time as soon as they are able to swing a batr or rush down the field with a football. One thing that I believe was much to our advantage and much in our favor, and that was all of our amusements were out of doors, in other words the movies were unknown and very likely had never ever been thought of. And I firmly believe was a good thing for us, although I haven't the least bit of doubt but we would gave been just as movie mad as the present generation of youngsters are, we had been given the opportunity, as it was at that time we got to see a panorama a few times during our childhood days, showing pictures of Pilgrim's Progress or pictures of heathen countries and the activities of some missionaries, or perhaps a land or sea battle, all still pictures of course, but they were highly colored and pleasing to the eye

Money with children of my class was a very scarce thing, and what we got of it was generally won by some effort of one kind or another. We proved the old proverb which says "where there's a will there's a way" by going out after it in ways that I believe is not necessary now, at least not in America, I notice most children get what they want from their parents with no more trouble involved than the mere asking for it. It may be amusing to the readers of this to learn how we contrived to scrape a few pennies to-gether to save up for a holiday or anything that we had set our hearts upon getting, that cost some money. Well a few of us would get together on a Saturday and go prospecting on some waste piece of land that was being reclaimed by the city by dumping rubbish in the low lying places. We would pick up old iron and often found pieces of brass which brought a better price than iron, and by diligent search we would run across various articles that could be converted in-to cash. One stunt that we practiced was sure fire, revenue producing, and was lots of fun. We built a fire on some dump where there had been a lot of tin cans deposited, so we gathered a pile of them and proceeded to melt the solder from them at the fire, oh happy days, we all felt like Gipsys and some how every boy has something of that nature in him; not being a psychologist I am unable to explain it, but I believe it is implanted in every boy a love for freedom of action, so that when he is employed at something the accomplishment of which needs no supervisor other than him self, he is perfectly happy. The element of chance in our hunt for treasure was very alluring, and I suspect those who go out prospecting for gold or any valuable material, have the same feeling as us boys had. The old bed of the river Dee was splendid hunting ground for us, as it was being filled up to a level of the surrounding land, with debris and refuse of all kinds. The Dee had been diverted from its original course and had just been completed shortly before I was born, and it took nearly all the time between then and the time when I came to be seventeen or eighteen years old to fill it up. This project was undertaken and finished so that there would be more harbor for shipping, there was a mile of it filled in and two miles of it left as it was so with the tides from the sea it formed a fine harbor for fishing vessels, it was called the Albert Basin, named for Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's Consort. He was her husband but never was elevated to the throne. Well we used to sell the stuff that we found to some junk man and save up the money for holidays, when we would always be going some where on the train.

Speaking of holidays and trains brings back to memory, the summer school vacation of 1879, that I spent in the city of Elgin about eighty miles north west of Aberdeen; Elgin is an ancient place with a fine ruin of a cathedral which was built about the thirteenth century, I was ten years old then, and my trip there was a great adventure for me, as I was alone, on what seemed at that time a long journey, and anticipated being gone all of the six weeks of the summer play. About six weeks before the school was the be let out for the summer, my aunt who was my mother's only sister, wrote to mother asking her to let me come and spend the summer with her and uncle Willie Hacket who had a bakers shop in Elgin. What a thrill of excitement was stirred within me when I heard the news, and my mother gave her consent for me to go, but the six weeks intervening between that time and the beginning of vacation seemed like years to look ahead to. My thoughts in my waking hours were almost wholly occupied contemplating the enjoyment i expected to get out that summer, and while I was in school I couldn't concentrate on my lessons, and would catch myself counting the days and weeks that had yet to pass before realization of my expectations, but at last the end of anticipation had arrived, and on a Saturday morning, the day after school closed I was started on my journey. I didn't sleep much the night before, and very little breakfast was enough that morning, as my heart was in my throat with excitement. the train left about ten o'clock in the forenoon, my mother came to the railway station to see me off and my father who was then Porter at the Forsyth's Temperance Hotel was on duty waiting trains, for the arrival of guests of the hotel, so he got to see me too, he gave me a sixpence, which made me feel like a millionaire, I don't remember my father ever giving me any money in my life before although I presume he may have done so in some small amount. I can remember how grateful I felt but was unable of course to express my appreciation of his generosity, but I guess he understood as good fathers generally do. At last the engine driver blew the whistle, and good-byes being said the train was off on the way to my destination, which would be reached about four hours later. It was a fine clear summer morning, so I settled myself to look out at all the sights that were to be seen; after passing through two tunnels in the city, we were soon beyond its limits, and out into the tunnels in the city, we were soon beyond its limits, and out into the open country where I saw the cattle grazing on the rich pastures along side of the railway, and it was rare fun watching the telegraph poles seem to go whizzing by at what seemed to me a furious rate of speed, although the train I was on would not be considered a fast one. It was called the Parliamentary train, so called because the railways were compelled by law which was made by act of parliament, to run at least one train a day on their main lines, and stop at every station on the line; a strange law you may think now, when the railway companies would suffer financial loss if they didn't run at least one train a day on their trains every day, and need no compulsory law to make them do so, but conditions were different in the early days of railways, before they became a popular mode of travel. It was not necessary at the time I am writing about to have such a law as people long before that time had become accustomed to it, and the old stage coaches were laid by to rot. The Stage coach at that time were only used for short local travel to places not very close to a railway, and situated perhaps from about eight to sixteen miles from some city, and they were not stage coaches within the real meaning of the term, they were called buses and named the Newburgh bus the Skeen bus, or the name of any place that they went to from the city; the old stage coaches were so called because of the fact that a coach would only be required to travel a certain specified distance say on a journey from Aberdeen to Edinburgh, Manchester, England, or London, and one would travel to London on quite a number of different coaches before reaching there, and they would be hauled by many different horses as well. To make a long story short the journey was made in or by stages, hence the name Stage coach. I don't know whether they still use the term Parliamentary, or Parley as it was commonly called, but the need of compulsion has been unnecessary for years and years now. Now to get back to my journey which I was enjoying immensely despite the fact that I felt a little uneasyness on account of imaginary fears that I might be on a train going somewhere else than to Elgin. I saw the farm servants working in the fields, and farm carts moving along the roads which at times could be seen from the train, then there was always some diversion at the stations where we let off and on passengers, and I liked to hear the Station master or a station porter calling the name of the station as we were coming to a stop, his voice would sound loud and clear as the coach I was in passed him, and die away gradually as we got by him, and it was funny to hear the pronunciation of the names of the several stations, and it always seems that men who are required to make announcements of that kind, nearly always get in the habit of pronunciation peculiar to themselves, I have noticed it in the stations in this country, how some train announcer has peculiarities all his own in the manner he does it. When we arrived at Elgin I soon saw the familiar face and figure of my uncle who was at the station to meet me. My uncle had a baker's shop on Commerce St. in the middle of the block next to High St. which was the principal street in the city, and right near the center of it. We had a mile or a little over to walk to his shop, the two stories above the shop was occupied by his family, who consisted of my aunt, grand-ma and himself, he also had an apprentice boy who had a room to him self, so it was allotted to me to sleep with him. My aunt being an invalid most of the time and a semi invalid part of it, was in bed when I got there; She had been afflicted most of her life with asthma and bronchitis, and no doubt other complications, I had known her all my life and she had always been very kind to me. She was some what of a refined lady, and it seemed to me a very patient one, for all of the suffering she had endured in her life time. There were two bakers and the apprentice besides my uncle worked in the shop and Eliza the sales lady. It wasn't long before I began to feel lonely and home sick, although every one was as kind and friendly as could be wished, I found my self wishing for the old familiar faces and scenes of home, and to make matters worse I didn't feel well, but had no idea what was wrong with me; about the middle of the week after I went there I broke out in a rash all over my body, so my aunt wrote to let my mother know about my condition but she knew nothing about the home sick feelings I was having, I managed to take that quite philosophically then, as I have always been able to do when attacked at various times in later life with that melancholy malady, I just said to myself that such a feeling couldn't last for ever and did the best I could to be interested in things around me. My mother wrote back to my aunt and informed her that there were a goodly number of German measles in our neighborhood in Aberdeen, and I had likely got infected before leaving and they were just now coming out on me, well I guess she was right, but I didn't get down in the bed with them and in a weeks time I felt as well as I had ever done, and happily I recovered from the attack of nostalgia at the same time. The very first week I was there my uncle's apprentice boy who was bound by law to stay with him seven years, that length of time being required to learn the trade. That is not customary now, but it had been a custom for centuries that all men of the mechanical trades, only got to learn them by becoming bound by law to stay with their masters for that length of time. Of course any one could learn a trade in much less time than that, but it was one way that employers had of reimbursing them selves for the time spent in the first two or three years learning, and when their production was small; it was a very unfair thing for the apprentice, but labor had to put up with a lot of injustice that it was not in their power to defend themselves from, but in the last fifty years the labor unions have done much to curb the power of the employers, and they have won many concessions in their favor that has greatly improved the conditions of the laboring people. I hadn't been with my uncle more than three or four days, when one morning on awakening, I found out that my bed fellow had arisen in the night some time and fled from the place. We found out later that he had walked all the way to Aberdeen, and what made him run off I never found out, my uncle and aunt said they thought he might have been jealous of me, I don't know whether that was so or not but I do know that he was not very friendly, and I didn't like him, for his dour disposition. He didn't come back again that summer but some time after that my uncle got him back to finish learning his trade, but whether he ever did so or not I don't know, my uncle didn't stay very long after that, as he sold out his business and came back to Aberdeen, to learn the business of making aerated waters, commonly called soft drinks. Scottish bakers are noted for their fine pastry baking, and my uncle made all the kinds of fancy bread and pastry as well as the different kinds of loaves. There was the Plain loaf, French loaf, pan loaf, all make of white flour, then there were whole meal loaves that I don't suppose any body really liked very well, but ate them an account of poor digestion, and there is no doubt about them being more nutritive and much better for one's health then white bread, as the refining process that the wheat goes through takes away a great deal of the nutritive value of it. Every morning in all the towns in Scotland the baker's delivery vans and delivery boys made their rounds except Sundays, with morning rolls, there were two different kinds of those and were known as baps and buttery rowies , meaning in English, butter rolls. the delivery boys carried the bread in round baskets with a flat bottom and the sides of the baskets were about six inches high, they had a round stuffed pad between their heads between their heads and the baskets which served the purpose of balancing it as well as being protection against the impact on the skull. Small as I then was I used to help a little in the delivery job, and enjoyed doing lots of little things for my uncle that I was capable of doing, and in return he was very good to me, but he would have been that any way, it is always a pleasing thing to a grown person to see a child show willingness to be of help in what ever surroundings he may be. My uncle used to take me out for a stroll in the evenings which in the summer time are as light as day almost up until about eleven o'clock, and at the height of summer it does not get real dark all night, as the sun is not so very far below the horizon in the latitude of Scotland, and not so very far north of that the sun does not set at all, as you know that part of the world is called the Land of the midnight Sun, then at another time of the year it is dark all the time for several months. At the longest day the sun rises over Scotland a little after three and sets at about ten p.m. so that it is light enough to take a photograph, and I have one in my possession showing the picture of a church with a clock in the steeple with the time clearly defined, the hands pointing to twelve, mid-night. There was a river ran through Elgin, but I am not now sure of the name of but think it was the Lossie, which ran in to the sea a few miles north, to what is called the Noray Firth, and that is where the little fishing village called Lossie mouth is, where J. Ramsey MacDonald was born and reared, he has twice been Prime Minister of Great Britain and is in office at the present time. My grand mother took me to Lossie-mouth one afternoon for an outing, it is a typical Scottish fishing population, and the smell of fish and the sea was strong, at that particular time the men were nearly all away at the herring fishing, that being the herring season. While there we went into a fisher's house and had tea, and cakes which my grand mother paid for. Some evenings my uncle took me to the river to fish, but I don't remember having much if any luck at all, still I enjoyed it even if I didn't catch any fish. About the second week I was there, I began to get acquainted with some of the boys, in the neighborhood of Commerce St. which made if more pleasant for me, and one of those boys took me to the slaughter house one day, to see the butchers killing cattle, and as I was never in a place of that kind before I was glad to go and see it with him, it was rather a gruesome business to me seeing the poor dumb creatures being led to the slaughter, bellowing with fear, as if they really knew what was about to happen to them, I didn't go very long however as something happened one day that made me never want to go back. I picked up a branding iron that day, and it was still hot, this was used for branding the hides for shipment to the tanner; there was a small child near by and it came up to me when I wasn't looking and took hold of the hot end of it, upon which she let out a cry of pain, and that scared me so that I ran out of the place as fast as my legs and feet would take me, and never went back. The iron I suppose had cooled enough so that the child wasn't badly burned, it had likely been more scared than hurt, but I didn't reason that out then, I thought I had done a terrible thing and for some time after I had fears of some policeman coming to take me and lock me up, I never heard anything of it however, but I was never seen around that slaughter house again. Elgin was and is yet of course rather a quaint and pretty old city, most of the streets as I remember were paved with cobble stones, just like the Part of Aberdeen called Old Aberdeen was. I remember there was a hill close to the High St. which had some cannon and other relics of the Crimean War, that was quite interesting, that war was fought with the Russians in the eighteen fifties.

The Elgin holiday was one Monday in July, so every place of business was closed just as if it had been Sunday, only it was much quieter than any Sunday could be, on account of so many of them gone on Saturday night, so as to spend the day, many of them had gone of saturday night, so as to spend the weekend, My uncle and aunt left that morning for Strath peffer, which was famous resort for invalids, there being mineral wells that were said to be very benificial to the health, so they went for my aunt's benefit and stayed a week. This place is near Inverness, dubbed the capital of the Highlands, and a city that many tourists visit on their itenerary through Scotland. I don't know if the water did my aunt any good or not but I remember she came back with her teeth almost black from the effects of the water, and she had such pretty teeth, but they soon recovered their natural state, although at first I feared they were everlastingly ruined. Well on the Holiday gandma and I spent most of the day at the ruined cathedral, and as I remember we were not disturbed by any body else, we two seemed to be the only visitors that day. We looked at and read many of the inscriptions on the ancient grave stones. I saw the reading desk which was cut out of the solid stone forming one of the pillars of the church, and what was most interesting to me some of the links of the chains that secured the bible to this stone desk were still attached to it, and my grandmother then told me about the olden times when the catholic church was the only church in christendom the pope and priests did not allow any one except themselves to read and interpret it, in fact they kept the people from even learning to read, and even many a nobleman and their ladies too could neither read nor write, and when they had occasion to communicate with each other had to come to the priests to do it for them. These conditions were changed when the religious reformation took place in the sixteenth century, and the presbyterian form of faith and worship was adopted by the Scottish people. Then the bible was an open book to every one who could read, so I presume that out of the desire for knowledge as to what the scriptures really contained was born the desire to learn to read, and study the great truths for themselves, but for a period of two hundred years or more the bitter struggle went on between the old order and the new, until, finally when the last of the Stuart race of kings were either beheaded or banished from the country they made such spiritual and material progress, as to arouse the admiration of all who know any thing about the world's history. Prior to the reformation the peoples of Scotland and England were buried deep in the densest ignorance and superstition.

A very amusing incident happened to me one day that I was enjoying a walk by myself along the highway to Aberdeen. I was strolling along about two miles from Elgin, near a place named Lady bride, when some women hoeing in a turnip field saw me passing and hailed me to stop which I did curious to find out what they wanted of me, so it wasn't long until my curiosity was satisfied. It turned out that they knew who I was, as they were all residents of Elgin. They knew about the apprentice running away, and they had taken it into their heads that I was up to the same trick, but I had a hard job trying to convince them that I was entirely innocent of any such intention, and assured them that I was enjoying my visit to my aunt and uncle, that I would be sorry when the time came when I really would have to leave, I suppose I got them to believe me, but I had a suspicion that they were somewhat disappointed that I hadn't provided a sensation. My relatives were much amused when I related the story to them.

There came another day that I dedided to go to a wood near by the city to pick blae berries meaning blue berries, and that time I got stung in the ear by a bee and then to cap the climax got lost in the wood. I really got scared that day as I began to think I wasn't going to find my way out, but I finally did more by chance than anything else come out about the same place I had entered at. I certainly felt relieved, as I had been thinking of tales I had read and heard about people getting lost in woods and forests, walking around in circles and finally starving to death from hunger, so being of a somewhat impressionable and imaginative turn of mind I had been thinking all these things over as I was trying to find my way out. I had never been stung by a bee before and my first impression was that that some one had sneaked up behind me and boxed me a good one, it startled me and hurt quite severely, but there was nothing I could do about it and it soon got well. The end of this very happy vacation came all too soon to suit me but time and the tides wait for no man, to say nothing of small boys, and back home I had to go, and to school again, It wasn't that I did not feel glad to be going home to my own people again that made me so melancholy, It was the old dread of school, and the contrast between it and the happy care free days of summer was too great for me to contemplate with a light heart. I think all children had feelings of that sort in some degree, but like everything else in the life of a child disappointment and grief, has no lasting effect, and in a little while I would fit in to the scheme of things quite naturally, and become accustomed to the drab routine of getting an education.

I will go back a few years now and tell some things about my experiences connected with the religious and spiritual education I had been receiving. I of course had been at church with my father some times before I was five years old, but my memory of that is very hazy. I can just remember sitting in the gallery of Grey Fiars Parish church, of which my father and mother were members and I can see in my minds eye, Mr. or Dr. Henderson, the minister, in his pulpit and the people of the congregation. Dr Henderson was a large fat man, and I can remember my parents didn't like him. My father said he was lazy, and wouldn't visit the members. When my father requested him to come to our house to baptize me, he refused to come, although it was an emergency case, I mean by that, that I was ill and at that time people were very anxious to have their babies baptized as soon as possible in case they might die before that church ceremony could be performed, as all unbaptized babies were supposed to go to hell if it had been neglected. I don't think that many people now hold that belief, but I think it is still presbyterian doctrine in-so-far that it has never been expunged from the written church laws. That has always seemed an awful thing to me, that a minister who was so derelict in his duty, as to refuse to save a child or at least even to risk a child's salvation, just because he wouldn't take the trouble to come to one's house to perform what was regarded as so vital a ceremony, but may-be he didn't believe in that particular clause of church doctrine, and if he did believe it, then I still think he was as bad as any criminal to refuse to save an innocent child or infant from the torments of eternity, which we were told every Sunday from the pulpit, if we didn't believe the holy scriptures, exactly as they were interpreted, and handed down to the faithful by the fathers.

The first Sunday School I went to was not of this church but in the kitchen belonging to a lady, by the name Miss Middleton whose house was directly opposite ours on Gordon St. that is her back door was opposite our front door, the front of her house was on Dee St.. Miss Middleton invited a few boys in the neighborhood to meet every Sunday afternoon in the kitchen, for religious instruction, and I remember how fine I thought that would be, I do not remember how many Sundays we gathered there, it may have only been one and it may have been more, because only one thing in connection with it remained indelibly impressed on my memory, and it was a shamefull thing too. It happened in this way: Miss Middleton had occasion to leave us in the kitchen by ourselves for a little while, and while she was absent some of the big boys took advantage of the opportunity to make a general rough house. They cut down some hams that were hanging from the ceiling, and turned off the gas light at the gas meter, which was in a press under the sink, and proceded to cavort around in the dark, I don't remember any other specific thing that they did to the room but I can imagine, it was plenty, and being, I suppose the youngest person in the place, not being more than five at that time I was very much frightened. When Miss Middleton returned pandemonium reigned, and no doubt the poor lady was scared out of her wits almost, and she dismissed the class and we were not taken back. I know I was disappointed at the sudden termination of the class, but I certainly had no anxiety to be again associated in Sunday school with such a band of rough necks, as it had all seemed terrible to me. I next was sent along with my brother to a mission Sunday school that was conducted by the members of one of the city churches, we called the Affleck St. Sunday school. About all that I remember of this school is the recollection of Mr. Buchart the Superintendant and his wife, who was my teacher. Mr Buchart was to my childish eyes a very good looking, and attractive man, with a black Prince Albert frock coat and gray trousers, and wore his whiskers in one of the fashionable styles of that time, that being a moustache and burnsides with clean shaven chin, I recollect also that I was quite a pet of Mrs' Buchart's, as she was in the habit of taking me on her lap for a while every Sunday, so I reckon I had made a hit with her, however that may have been I know that I liked her very much. My next experience in the way of Sunday schools was in a Methodist church on Dee St. and the most outstanding memory about it was my teacher, who was a stone mason by trade, I thought him a very good kindly man, but Oh what an affliction he was by having such an odor in his breath. I had the misfortune to be always in the front seat and he was in the seat in front of that and would lean over the back of it so that his face would be quite close to us, but apart from that I had no other unpleasant experience, I always enjoyed the hymn singing and joined in it, so that I got to know them by heart, but most of those old hymns are out of date now. I suppose I was getting on to be about seven years old by this time, when my brother and I went to another mission Sunday school, that was conducted during the forenoon church hour, I think I went to that one about two years, and since I come to think of it I must have started to go there when I was six years old as the first year my brother and I both got a prize each, consisting of a book, for perfect attendance. I still have that book in my possession, and the title of it is Arthur Fortesque, It is typical of the books for young folk that were current in the mid Victorian era, they were all of the goody-goody or as they are designated now the Polly Anna type. The next years attendance was broken by an attack of pneumonia that I suffered in the month of March, and that by the way was the only time in my life that it looked as if I was going to die, the truth of the matter is my mother and father both thought I was dead late one night, and my mother went to wake one of the neighbors up to help lay me out, but when they got to me I was showing signs of life and in the morning I remember on awakening I sat up in bed and told my mother I was better, but she quickly tucked me under the covers again, and it was some time after that before I was well enouth to get out of bed. I was delirious all the time that I was ill, and the only thing I remember about is that I was dreaming all the time of disagreable things. People in those days called it inflamation of the lungs which it is, so when I got strong enough to go back to school, my mother instructed me to tell my teacher the reason I had been absent so long was because I had been ill with that disease, and never before having known that I had such an organ in my body, I was unfamiliar with the term, and thought my mother said inflamation of the lugs, that being what we called our ears in Scotland, so being some what mystified, not having felt any pain or discomfort of any kind in that region, I told my mother that I had felt nothing wrong with my lugs, so she got a good hearty laugh at my misunderstanding, and explained to me what my lungs were and their use, it seemed all quite funny to me too, but I learned something I hadn't yet learned in school. Just a little while after that year was out my father and mother took their letter from Grey Friars church and joined Trinity Parish church, which had just been established, and for all I know they may have been charter members of it, at any rate that is when my brother and I were sent to the Sunday school connected with that church, and all of us children went there until we were old enough to leave. It is not customary in Scotland for adults to go to Sunday school, and the children go only until they reach the age of fourteen or fifteen. The Sunday school picnics and soirees were great events, each of those occurring once every year, the picnic in summer and the soiree or social meeting about Christmas time. We had various games and races at our picnics and a bakers van would be sent out with as much tea as was needed and a paper bag full of fancy bisquits, there would be five different kind of biscuits, namely, a hard biscuit, a soft biscuit, a rice biscuit, a currnat bun, and last and best a Queen cake or sponge cake, and what a treat it was, because we didn't get such fare very often, and to get a whole bag full to ourselves at one time was perfect bliss. What fun and excitement the kids had on picnic day, the most of them were held on a Saturday, so as to give fathers a chanbce to go, we used to all meet at the church, and march from there to the railway station, and go about six or eight miles into the country to some farmer's field, that had kindly been donated for our use on that day, then home on the train at night, or rather the early part of the evening, tired and happy from the day's sport. The soirees as I have said were held around Christmas time, and we were treated with the same kind of fare as we got at the picnics, there would always be a Christmas tree, and the children got each a toy of some kind or other, and an apple, and an orange and a bag of mixed candy. The minister used to always have some of his friends present to help entertain us with funny annecdotes and some one would sing a few songs and the whole crowd would also sing in unison. Altogether we had a jolly evening, and these things were more eagerly looked forward to than they are now since there is so much entertainment of a commercial nature such as the picture shows. About the time that we joined Trinity Church, my youngest sister was born, and I was nearly eight years old, and the two girls were six and eight respectively. We woke up one Sunday morning all in the same bed, and my father told us that we had gotten a baby sister, this was the most interesting and exciting news, and we could hardly wait until we were allowed to see the latest arrival to our humble home. Like most children we had been wishing for a baby, but had about given up hope almost that our wishes would be gratified. The time came however when I came to regard having to tend the baby as very much of a nuisance when I would much rather be free to play, but as I was older than my two sisters, that duty had to be mine, many a time I have carried her in the crook of my arm in a shawl wrapped around her and my shoulders which served as a support, and lightened the weight on me. This latest child was named Frances Simpson after my father's mother and of course was shortened to Fanny. Some times I would take her out in the coach too, then I could play some and let her watch, perhaps she might take a nap. This brought the total number of children to eight, but three of them as I have said died in infancy.

It was the custom in Scotland when I was a boy and I suppose it was inaugurated in the early days of the religious reformation to have two fast days every year; they came in April and October on the Wednesday preceeding the sacrement of the Lord's supper, the purpose of those days, was for spiritual preparation, for that celebration. The people of the time of which I am writing were not observing the Fast days as they should, just a handful of them would assemble in the churches for worship, and the great majority made a holiday of it, all places of business being closed for the day. One memorable Fast day, I believe it was in October, my father and I were at Grey Friars Parish church, I was just seven years old, that would have been in eighteen seventy six, and our way home from church we heard the terrible news of the sinking of the ferry boat that transported passengers from the Aberdeen side of the river Dee to Torry in Kincardineshire, the adjoining county on the south, the boat was overloaded I believe and too many were on one side of the boat. The boat was operated by a cable stretched from one side of the river to the other, and the ferry-man turned a wheel on the boat to propel it across, there had been too much strain on the cable so it broke when the boat was about the middle of the river. It immediately turned over and plunged all the passengers into the water, and many of them were drowned, some who could swim were saved but even that didn't help all who could swim, as some of the drowning people dragged them down with themselves, but there were many heroic acts performed that day by those that could help others and some lives were lost by failure of attempts to save some others unfortunate enough in not being able to swim, I don't remember how many were drowned but I think it some where near a hundred. We were all a lot worried that day as we didn't know where my brother was, he left in the morning to go some where with some of his chums, so we thought there was a possibility that he might have been in that boat, but he came home after a while and we were all very happy that he was safe and sound. That has been fifty seven years ago and there is little doubt but there are still some survivors of that sad accident left on earth yet. About ten years after the date of the ferry boat disaster the Fast days were abolished in Aberdeen, and a holiday was established in place of them, and these holidays are called the Spring and Autumn holidays. The churches then had a special service of worship on Friday nights preceding the sacrement Sundays, which was a much better arrangement for every body.

On the following summer to the one I spent at Elgin I was invited to spend three weeks of the summer play at the Mains of Orchardton, a farm where one of my uncles was superintendant, this uncle was a brother of my father's, we called him uncle Sandy, that being the dimutive for Alexander, he was the youngest of my grandfather's family. That was three weeks of rare enjoyment, as there were two children about my own age, a boy and a girl. Alec was about six months younger than myself and

nie was about one year and a half older, so they were great playmates. I always liked country life, but never had much opportunity to sample it, but I could have stayed there with my uncle and aunt, always and never have wanted to go back to town, at least that is what I then thought, of course I might have changed my mind if I had got the chance, and settled down to the life and had to go to school, that would have been an experience not so pleasant perhaps, especially in winter. It was turnip hoeing time and the haying season while I was there, and Alec and I used to take a hoe each and go out to the field and help just for the fun we got out of being with the men, it would not be long how ever before we be off on some other project, as we were free as the birds so long as we didn't get into mischief. There was a burn that we used to fish in but we never caught fish of any size, only little fish that were called buddicks, and sometimes an eel would get hooked and tangle up on our lines, we also had a flower garden that we had to keep clear of weeds. The most thrilling and exciting event that happened while I was there was the Udny games, held on the Green of Udny, which was what might be called a common. Udny was the parish center, but was just a small village of course, with a few merchants who supplied the folks with the necessaries of life, the Parish church was there and a school. On the day of the games all the farmers and their servants took a holiday, and every body who was able went from miles around. It was a gay sight to see the hay carts and well groomed horses all bedecked with flowers and vari-colored ribbon, the farmer, or his fore-man up in front driving and all the lads and lasses sitting on the hay spread over the bed of the cart; it was a gala occasion and every one seemed in a light hearted jolly mood. It was fun to be here the farm servants hailing and joshing each other on the road, as they were coming from all directions to attend the games, some of them no doubt feeling the exhilaration due to a taste out of a bottle, there being always more or less drinking at games and fairs. There were all sorts of the sports I mentioned when I was describing the games played by boys, they would get first, second and third prizes which was paid in part at least out of the entry money the contestants had to pay to be allowed to compete. There were dancing competitions of highland dancing which included the Highland fling, Chillie Callum, or sword dance, and shean trews, I am not sure now whether that is the correct spelling or not, as these last are Gaelic names. There was also dancing for the men and women who danced in couples, with a good band playing for them. I enjoyed watching them as they danced the popular dances of that time such as the Scottish foursome reel which was always the first and last dance, at all gatherings of that kind or at any ball or informal dance, then there were the Highland Schottishe, which is a round dance, the couples circling the floor Rory O'Moore, Petronella, Monymusk, were contra dances, we also had two styles of quadrilles, Edinburg Quadrille and the Lancers Quadrille, Circassian Circle, Waltz, German Schottishe, Polka, Polka Muzurka, La Varsivianna or La Va for short, I feel sure there were some others, which I have forgotten; it seems to me that there is not so much variety now, and the contra dances or square dances as they are called in America have lost their popularity, althouggh they have had a revival to some small extent, but it has been taken up more as a fad, I don't believe many of the young people care much for them. Some of the older people who still think they are young enough to dance indulge a little in dancing them. Henry Ford the Motor magnate is largely responsible for their return. There was plenty of fun dancing them as the couples had contact with nearly all of the other dancers, while the round dances were one man and one woman affairs, and were all right, but variety is the spice of life and I think there was more real fun and enjoyment in that, but at the present time my opinion might be considered old fogy. About ten or a dozen years ago Henry Ford started having the old fashioned square dances among his workmen, their wives and sweethearts, that also brought about a renaisance of old time fiddling, as that was the music fitted for those dances. He promoted old fiddlers conventions over the country, and even had some fiddlers come accross the atlantic to these conventions, where they would compete for honors and prizes. He even brought the famous Scott Skinner who was the best player of Strath Spey music that Scotland ever produced, that is of course a kind of music peculiar to Scotland alone, and is suited for the lively and spirited Scottish Highland dancing, Scott him self was a composer of much of that kind of music, The tune Monymusk is a type of that kind of music, and has been pretty well known in this country, but I don't hear it any more. These games or sports are held some places in America where scotsmen are in large enough numbers to have them, and are much enjoyed by natives as well. I have been at some of themn, and for the time being one can imagine himself back in Scotland. The three weeks soon came to an end, and time to go back to school again, I was longing for the time that I would have to go no more, but I had sixteen months of it to put in yet before I could start out and look for a job. ********

School you may have noticed was not any attraction for me and that play time was the most enjoyable periods of my life, but I have noticed that I was not alone in that, however, after the first few days I was all right, It was just the contrast between the care free life of holiday time and the responsibility of performing the exacting duties of the school room, and to me the drudgery of homework on my lessons that made it seem dull and unattractive, so don't get the idea that life was unbearable to me, because I had very jolly times, and every week there was always the pleasant anticipation of Saturday. I do believe a boy or girl either would have a miserable life if the school kept six days in the week, with Sunday school and church services for recreation on the seventh day. I had no particular dislike for any of my studies, with the exception of arithmetic, and as long as I was in the simple branches of that I got along very well, but when I got into proportion and fractions as well as some of the other more complicated examples of mathmatics, I had a hard time of it. I was especially fond of history, and what was called composition; the teacher would tell or read a story to the class, then we had to write it in our own words, and I remember getting praise and good marks for my efforts. I liked geography very well too, but didn't care so much for grammar, I didn't care for drawing, because I simply didn't have any talent for it, I would do quite well copying one side of a given object, but when I tried to match the other side , the finished product of my artistic attempt would be unbalanced and lop sided. I often carried away the medal for spelling, but I'm afraid those who read this will think I was nore deserving of a booby prize, but in self defense let me say to any critics, that mistakes in spelling here-in contained are mostly due to my inexperience at the typeing machine and over confidence, which causes me to write to fast for my ability, I generally see my mistakes the moment they are made, as for example look at the error, in the fourth line preceding this will find the word typing mispelled, and that is an error common to many. As to my grammar, that , as the slang phrase has it, is something else again. I can sense good grammar and bad in reading or hearing a speaker, but when I write or speak my self, I am guilty of many mistakes, and that is due partly to the fact that I will not take more time to study the construction of my sentences, and partly to lack of training. If I were to think out the way to state what I am trying to tell on these pages, in the best grammatical form of which I am capable, I'm afraid I wouldn't live long enough to get the story finished. When I was eleven years old I failed in the fifth standard, I was never told which study I failed in but I suspected it was arihmetic that was the stumbling block to me, any way I had to go through that same course of study for another whole year. I didn't have much trouble learning arithmetic when I took a course in the International Correspondence School of Scranton Pa. I had to learn some of the higher branches of mathematics for the architectural course I was studying, fot the purpose of advancing my self in my trade, I attributed that to the fact that I was able through better tutorage to understand the rules, my wife who was an old school teacher, also having experience as an instructor in the Scranton School, where she had been teaching just before we were married, and had been in the arithmetical department of the English branch of the school. I didn't finish my course by the way, as I was in a hurry to cash in on what I had learned long before I reached the completion of it. As soon as I got able to make estimates on monumantal work, I got a chance to take a position traveling for a wholesale manufacturer of monuments. This is getting ahead of my story a bit however, so I will retrace my steps back to the time I was ten years old. **

About this time in my life , a neighbor boy and myself picked up a little money working for an old man who sawed and chopped wood for kindling fires. Coal was used in the cities for cooking and heating purposes and the poor people as well as most others of the middle classes had open fireplaces and in the kitchens of the most modernly built houses had an oven on the side of the grate for baking purposes, and that had a small fire box underneath, so as to give heat from the bottom as well as from the side, very little baking was done however, as the bakers suppied, all kinds of bread, except oat-meal cakes, and lots of the house wives when they had a piece of meat to roast, sent it out to the neighborhood baker to have it done in his oven, and for such service he made a small charge. There being no such thing as gas cook stoves in those days, fires had to be kindled in the mornings in winter and perhaps twice a day in the warmest part of summer, so the trade in kindling wood kept up summer and winter. The old man sawed his logs into about eight inch lengths and then chopped them into sticks about three quarters of an inch or and inch thick, and about a dozen peices were then tied together with a piece of string or thin wire. One of these bundles sold for a half-penny and three of them for a penny. My friend and I would take a number of bundles in a wheel barrow and peddle them around the houses, and the man paid us a small commission on what we sold. That was very agreeable work as I seemed to like tosell things. I was at this job when we ran across the lady who paid us sixpense for carrying water for her, and I kept the half of it without saying anything to my mother about it.

This was the year of 1879 when the awful disaster happened to the Tay Bridge, a bridge two miles long built of steel and had not been built very long before it was destroyed. The tragedy happened about the twenty seventh of December, on a terrible stormy night. It was a railway bridge and spanned the River Tay at a place called Newport on the south side and the city of Dundee on the north. A terrible storm of wind and rain came on, in the after noon and lasted all night. It being Sunday, we were all at home except my father who had gone to Manofield to visit one of his brothers just after dinner time and before the storm came on, Manofield was out on the out skirts of Aberdeen , about two and a half miles from our house, and as the street cars didn't run on Sundays then, we were afraid that something might happen to father before he got home as slates and tiles were being blown from the roofs of houses and signs from over the shops in many parts of the city were blown down, so that it wasn't safe for people to walk on the streets, coal smoke was being blown down our chimney too so that we had to sometimes lie flat on the floor to keep from being suffocated. My father got home safe however some time in the evening after supper, so that we all felt safer by his presence. I have forgotten, if I ever knew at all, but I think it must have been a north east storm, as that is the direction from which the east coast of Scotland gets the worst.

I don't know if it was ever proved, but it was thought that the train was on the part of the bridge that was blown down at the time it happened, and some thought that the gap was there when the train arived at that point. People sitting watching the lights of the train from their windows as it made its way over the bridge, I believe were divided in their opinions about it, some thought it was blown down when the train was on it and some that the gap was there when it got there, no one on the train was left to tell and all that the watchers saw was the lights suddenly drop down and just as suddenly all was blackness. The steel girders at that part of the bridge were built above the frame work in stead on under as they were constructed all the way on both sides from the land out to this place in the middle, and that was done so that ships could pass under without striking their masts. That was no doubt the structure's weakest point as the wind had found less resistance to its force coming against those girders elevated about the road bed. That was a great sorrow to many people you might say all over the world, as there were many people on that train from countries abroad, who were visiting back home in Scotland for the New Year's holidays and the balance of the winter. It was also a great disappointment to the people of Scotland who were proud of this modern structure, but it was not many years until they built another, which is still standing, and what ever mistakes were made in the first one, had not been repeated. Previous to the time that the first bridge was built the railway company transferred their passengers by ferry boat, but whether they had to leave the train at one side and board another at the opposite side I don't know, it may be that they transported train and all across the river. I have crossed ferrys myself in this country that took the whole train aboard, I have crossed the Pasquotank Sound or it may have been river, on such a ferry boat.

So far I have not said any thing about Christmas, and it may be thought that it didn't cut much of a figure in Scotland, and in a measure that is true, as far as the holiday spirit animating the people at that season is concerned, but it wasn't neglected by the church and many other organizations that stood for the good things of the life of mankind. Christmas trees for the Sunday school children were decorated in all the churches and Sunday school rooms, and loaded with toys, for distribution, also social gatherings were held in the homes, and concerts and dances were plentiful all over the country as well as in the towns and cities, the only difference being that we didn't celebrate it by making a holiday of the twenty fifth of December as is customary in most countries. New Years day was our holiday, and on New Years eve Santa Claus made his visits down the chimney among the children of the land. I am not able to explain why this is so, but my theory is that it being a church festival which was and is observed by the oldest church in Christendom it fell into disfavor with the protestants of Scotland at the Reformation. The Presbyeteians seem to have been the most severe in their casting aside all the formalities of the Catholic faith.

Bestowal of gifts was not indulged in among the poorer classes of Scotland, at the Christmas season to such an extent as it is in America, although half a century ago it hadn't reached such an extreme as it now has. The children of course were always remembered, although the gifts they received were simple and cheap as they necessarily had to be when the small incomes of the parents was barely sufficient to cover the household expenses. The custom of Christmas giving has almost reached the stage of commercialism, each one vying with the other in giving expensive presents. Santa Claus visited Scotland on New Years Eve instead of Christmas Eve, and I have wondered if Scotland is the only country that he distributes his gifts in on that night, I am entirely ignorant on the subject. The last day of the year is called Hogmanay day and Hogmanay night is a regular carnival of celebration all over the country. In the cities and towns great crowds are out on the streets until midnight, and all the public houses as liquor saloons are called in Scotland are open and crowded until the closing hour of eleven o'clock. An hour after that the town clock rings out the hour of midnight, and a new year is ushered in with hurrahs and all sorts of noises, then very soon every body starts out to be the first foot if possible to cross the threshold of some friends home. It is the younger folk that do this mostly, the old folks are nearly all in their all in their houses waiting to see if any one will come bringing jolly good cheer along with them. Small groups of the young people call on their married friends and the first one to be let into the house had to be supplied with something to eat and drink, otherwise it would be bad luck. The something would be a bottle of Whisky and some thing or other to eat such as oatmeal cakes and a piece of cheese or maybe a red herring, it mattered nothing as to what it consisted of, but the drink had to be the kind that Bobbie Burns the Scottish poet said in one of his lines, kindled wit and waukened lear, then when the company got settled around the fire side and the dram passed round, song singing and story telling went on until the wee sma' hoors began to get bigger and reluctant good byes just had to be said so that all could get some sleep to refresh them for the pleasures of New Years day, which were in the nature of our Christmas holiday in England or America. I have many happy memories of the season when I used to be in on those first footing exploits, There was one time particular that stands out quite vividly in my mind in connection with the custom that gave the boys and myself quite a bit of amusement. I think I was twenty years old when it happened that we were first footing my brother just after twelve o'clock New Years morning. We were singing and having a fine time when suddenly someone knocked so loudly on my brother's door, and notified us that the house was on fire, so all hustled out as fast as we could and followed the man to his apartment which was rapidly filling with smoke and found his wife trying to locate the fire which we found had started in the wall, and was still confined to it, We knew the man by sight as Dannie the Bill sticker or to be correct bill poster, he was a little runt of a man with very large saucer eyes projecting ominously out of his head so that any minute one might expect them to pop out altogether, and especially just then when he was so excited, he was all the time volubly trying to explain how he set the fire going, It seem that on his return home just after midnight he had smelled the odor of illumination gas upon entering the apartment and went to a closet in the kitchen where the gas meter was located, and fool like he lit a match upon which he ignited it and set the plaster lath inside the wall on fire. *** All the time that he was explaining matters we were busy trying to put the fire out, Bob Martin one of my chums was hacking away at the wall above the mantle piece and sending the plaster flying every where across the kitchen one of the other boys filled a bucket with water at the sink, and rushing to the fire place he threw it with all his force in to the gap that Bob had by this time made in the wall, and Dannie who seemed to be always getting in the way was standing right below that gazing at the partial destruction of his kitchen wall got the contents on top of his bald head, that didn't by any means put him in a good humor and he started to curse out the lad who was responsible for his ducking, and even went as far as to say he had purposely tried to give him a drowning. Just as the fun was at its height the fire brigade arrived on the scene but by this time we had got it out, and the chief started to quiz Dannie as to how it all happened, and Dannie being some what under the influence of his cups, explained to the chief that he and his wife had been away a feed that night and had been doing considerable celebrating, that he had come home with his good wife and when he came in at the door he had smelled the gas and lit a match to investigate with the result that I have explained. Dannie wanted to know from the chief if he would get paid anything for helping to save the house from being burned down, the chief replied that he ought to consider himself lucky not to be put under arrest for setting it on fire. To us boys it was the most comical skit in real life that we had ever seen and we just about split our sides laughing, and when the fun was all over we repaired back to my brother's apartment to get a good laugh over the night's adventure before going home, which when we finally did get there and to bed must have been somewhere between three and four o'clock. When I got home my mother was still lying awake and beginning to be anxious for me, but she felt all right when I told her about the fire and Dannie the billsticker. I think she was perhaps aftaid that I had gotten too much New Years cheer, and the next day I gave them all the entertainment they were looking for relating the tale of Dannie the bill sticker, and what befell him after being as he phrased it awa" at a feed. I am again getting ahead of my story though so I must get back to boy hood once more to the summers when once in a while my father would take me with him to Gordon's mills with a load of what ever was to be hauled out there, and to bring a load of something else back to town. That was when he worked at Hadden's Mill. He and another man Cummins by name took that trip turn about, my father going one day and Mr. Cummins the other. My father would get up and have his breakfast before five o'clock, feed his horse and hitch it to the cart which had been loaded the night before all ready to leave in the morning, and in the time that he was doing this my mother would get me ready to leave the house so that I would be in time to meet him coming up Union St. on his way to Garlogie, and not Gordon's mills as I have said, that was the mill he went to on the morning that Mr. Cummins was at Garlogie. *** One of those mornings that I was to meet my father on Union St. I thought I was late and couldn't see him any where and as I enjoyed the trips so well I was very much disappointed at missing him, so much so that I had started to shed a few tears, when I met a man on his way to work who stopped to ask what ailed me, and when between sobs I managed to explain my situation he told me that he knew my father and his horse and cart and always met them about that time in the morning at just about the same place. He said he didn't think he had gone yet and just about that time he hove in sight from Bridge St. and turned into Union St. so, much to my joy, I didn't miss my trip after all. It was great enjoyment to get out to the country, sitting high up on the load of wool or yarn, which was covered with a black tarpaulin, we had about a ten mile drive to the mill at Garlogie, so, when we got to our destination it would be nearly nine o'clock, and time to eat some of the lunch we carried with us, then my father unloaded his cart and loaded it again with something to take back to the mill in town, while I would be rambling around in a near by wood picking blae berries to take home for my mother to make jam of. About noon we ate our lunch and soon after start back to town, arriving back about four o'clock. I some times went to Gordon's mill, but that was not so much fun, as it was only about three miles from the city and we would get back from there by nine o'clock. My father left that job when I was about nine years old and went to work as porter at Forsyth's Hotel. That was a better job from the stand point of remuneration, but he had to work much longer hours. He had to be at the stable to feed and curry his horse at six in the morning and never got home except to meals until about eleven o'clock at night. He stayed at that job about nine years, so we saw little of him except on Sundays, and we didn't like that much.

When I was twelve years old my father and mother decided to move from Gordon St. to Saint Paul St., back to within a block from where I was born. This apartment had two larger rooms than we had in the Gordon Sr. house and had a large court behind it where there was another dwelling, housing quite a number of tennants. I soon got acquainted with the neighbor boys there, and during the year we lived there I liked it fine, this was my last year of school and I was looking forward to going to work in December. It was the year 1881 and I was 12 years old in April. Back in the court behind our house there was a place where some tinsmiths worked, making cans and pails, we used to enjoy watching them cutting the tin, and shaping it into the things they made. There was also a small manufacturer of aerated waters commonly known as soft drinks. At that time there was not such a large variety of drinks made, and this small bottling plant made only lemonade, and ginger ale, at least that is all that I remember about. The place was owned by a widow lady, who had a shop on the ground floor of the house we lived in, where she sold the drinks at retail. Her son Jim Mitchell who might have been a chap of about eighteen or nineteen made the drinks and he used to get us boys to help him just for the fun that we got out of it and a drink once in a while. Lemonade I think retailed at that time for twopense (four cents) a bottle, ginger ale was the same price, that was put in stone bottles, which are made of some kind of clay, the old fashioned whisky demijohns were made of the same material. Lemonade bottles and any other flavored drinks which may have been made then were put into glass bottles of a shape that I never see now, nor for forty years past. They were shaped at the bottom like the end of a torpedo, that is they came to a point so that they couldn't be set up on the bottom, and they were stopped at the neck with a cork stopper tied securely down with a piece of strong thin wire. It was fun for kids to open one of those, as when the stopper was released from the wire it would fly out like a bullet from a pistol, and with about as much noise, indeed one had to be careful that it didn't hit a bystander in the eye. I suppose that is how the name pop got its origin. The soft drink factory was a small concern, and the machinery was run by man power, or in this case mostly by boy power, as Mitchell usually got some of us boys in the neighborhood to turn the wheel of the machine for generating the gas that put the pep in the drinks. One or two boys on each side of the wheel turned it until the chemicals did the trick, and we could tell by the indicator when the job was done. We also helped in putting the syrup in the bottles, and for our work which we rather enjoyed we got treated to as much lemonade as we cared to drink.

In August of that year there was held in the Capital city of Edinburgh, a review of volunteer military troops for an inspection by Queen Victoria, and every volunteer in the country who could get away from his work was there. It was to be a glorious occasion for the young fellows composing the volunteer regiments. The weather interfered however, and turned it into a never to be forgotton catastrophe for many of the gallant men. The cold rain came down in torrents all day, and drenched them all to the skin, and they had no means of protection from the elements whatever. Many of them were long distances from home and had to remain in their wet clothes until they arrived there which in lots of instances was not until the following day. Some of the men died from the hardships and exposure before they reached home, and others died later from pneumonia. Many never got over it and suffered all their lives from rheumatism, bronchial troubles, consumption as tuberculosis was called mostly in those days, and other kindred ailments. The review was a dismal failure and still lives in the memory of those living yet, especially those who participated in it. I noticed in an Aberdeen, Scotland paper not very long ago a report of the annual meeting of some of the veterans of the review, apparently they banded themselves in to a society for the perpetuation of the memory of it. I remember my father came home from work to supper about six o'clock in the evening and he was almost perished, he shook as with an ague and we were very much worried about him, and I have ofter wondered what would have been the result if he hadn't had an opportunity to change his clothes until next day, he being afflicted with a chronic broncial trouble that recurred every winter. Many of the men still survive and the youngest of them would be around seventy two and maybe not over seventy, as there were lots of young fellows of seventeen and eighteen enrolled in the volunteers, I myself joined the Royal Engineers when I was nearly eighteen. This year 1881 was my last year of schooling, I had been at it seven years altogether, with only about seven weeks out each year. Compared with the length of time that children went to school in this country, at that date it was much longer, than they went even in the northern part of the states, where educational opportunities were greater than in the south. I was somewhat astonished that we in Scotland received an education in our very early youth more intensively than than did the children of America. It seems that here it is spread over more years and they are older before they are advanced as much as we were. I noticed that same difference not more than thirteen years ago, when one of my nephews came to this country from Scotland, He had left school at the age of fourteen and had been employed in an insurance office as office boy until he was seventeen, at which age he came here, and at once got a position in an insurance office at sixty dollars a month, and about three months afterwards he was promoted to be book keeper, at seventy five dollars, he then being at the age when boys here are getting finished their high school education, and at that they didn't seem to be equipped any better to enter business than this Scottish lad would have been at the age of fourteen, the only objection to his being employed in the capacity of book keeper at that early age would have been a reluctance on the part of and employer to put that much responsibility on a mere boy. He was capable of composing a splendid letter too. I at twelve years of age didn't get so far so when in December of the year mentioned I left school one day for the last time and sallied forth to seek work as a message boy from a grocer, butcher or baker or any other merchant whom I might be lucky enough to find in need of my services. I had been looking around for a week before I chanced to run into a job, but finally on Saturday morning I was strolling through the New Market, in hopes of picking up some thing or other that I could earn a living at, when I heard a man behind me call out, "hey laddie" and on turning round to see what it meant, and old gentleman with a portly figure wearing a tall silk hat and a butchers apron beckoned me to come towards him, which I promptly did, especially as I recognized him as one of the butchers that I had asked a job from a day or two previous to that time. When I got to his side He asked me if I would go a message out to the Brig o' Dee, that was about two and a half miles away so I said I would and he promised to pay me twopence for my trouble. When I got back, instead of paying me he told me to go home to my dinner and to come back in the afternoon as he said he had some more messages he wanted me to go. That was satisfactory to me so I did as I was told and worked until night when he paid me eight pence, and told me to come back on Monday morning at eight o'clock. And so that is how I got installed into my first job, and a proud boy I was at being able to bring home my wages every night, as that was how I was paid. It was rather an unusual way, and I never knew any other employer who had that system of paying his message boys, but James or Jeems as he was commonly called was rather an eccentric old gentleman, and he had many ways that was not exactly conventional. He was very well off financially and lived in a nice house with two daughters, and kept a servant lass, and only the well-to-do could afford that luxury. James Davidson was his name, and he was a gentleman of the old school they used to say, the younger butchers in the market used to get lots of fun at him and his old fashioned ways and manner of speech. He wore half Wellington boots which reached to the calf of his leg, made of the finest calf leather. *********Wellington boots were named after the Duke of Wellington of Waterloo fame. The style we wore came to his knees and were really riding boots, then the kind that came half way up the leg were called half Wellingtons, and were still worn by many of the older men even at that date nearly sixty years after that great battle, but fashions lived longer in those days, and there were still many survivors of the Napoleonic wars living in the eighteen eighties. He wore a collar that came up high, partially covering the lower part of his cheeks, and a stock as the neck tie was called and only quite old men wore those toward the latter part of the eighties, I remember William Gladstone the Prime minister of Great Britain wore them then, but he had discarded the sttyle before he died, I think he died about the end of the nineteenth century. He employed one salesman, and another boy besides myself to go messages, and he had two killers who butchered the beeves, and they used to come to the shop Fridays and Saturdays to help with the trade as that was the two busiest days with the butchers shops, and there was no killing at the end of the week. Jeems like many more of the butchers conducting a fair sized business used to go to the cattle sales that were held in Aberdeen nearly every day of the week and carried on in a large mart, where the butchers would sit around a ring on seats elevated above it and one tier above another something like a circus. There was an auctioneer who sold the cattle to the highest bidder, it was real interesting to me when I used sometimes to go out to the sale on a Wednesday afternoon when the sales shop was closed for the mid week half holiday. There were two such cattle sales markets in Aberdeen and some of the finest beef cattle went through these markets on their way to the slaughter house. Aberdeen is noted of the black Angus breed that is produced in the country, and when I was young the beef of the breed brought the highest prices in the London market. There was a flourishing trade carried on with London, by the Aberdeen butchers, they used to cut off the fore quatrters and sell that at home, as all the cheaper cuts are mostly found on that part of the animal, which are mostly used for stewing or boiling. Of course much of the hind quarters are sold locally too, but most of the choice cuts being there, the rich folk bought them mostly for roasts and steaks. The market where I worked was a very large building and housed merchants of many different kinds. It fronted on Market St. and was just about a hundred feet from what was known as the center of the city, and Union St. the principal street of the city. Entering from the front at wide doors which was the east end of the building, you would find yourself in a large oblong area, the middle of which was occupied by vegetable, fruit and flower dealers, the floor was of thick slate slabs, concrete not being in use then for such purposes anyway, in fact I don't recall much about cement then, all the setting of stone and brick was done with lime sand mixed, that forming a morter that was not as binding as cement but evidently served the purpose as buildings that had been standing for ages, were set together in that manner. It had a high ceiling with iron girders supporting the roof which was almost entirely of glass and made good light inside. All around hte sides of this floor were the butchers shops the windows of which looked out upon the street. The shop where I worked was the third one from the front. Directly above the butchers shops a gallery ran all the way around the two sides and ends of the building, and to give some idea as to the size of the building, the length of it covered a city block, and the width half a block. The gallery had shops built in all around it with an alley way outside them just like the alleyway running around in front of the butchers shops, the shops in the gallery were occupied by merchants of various kinds such as tailors, book sellers, watch makers and jewelers, dealers in crockery, and wicker work, which was comprised of baskets, baby carriages, chairs, and other miscellaneous articles, made of cane and bamboo, etc.. Toy merchants were in the majority over all the others and every body in the market for toys would not fail to look over the assortment in the gallery of the New Market before purchasing, and that was a busy section during the Christmas and New Year's season, in fact there were few toy shops in the city out side of this popular market. Near the west end of the main floor, and situated just at the top of a wide granite stair way leading down to the ground floor, was a beautiful, and large granite fountain, built of Peaterhead red granite polished all over, it had three basins one above the other, the large basin at the bottom was used by the vegetable merchants, the fruiterers of fruit dealers as we call them here, and the florists to wash their wares in, the water being continuously kept fresh by the steady stream sent spout-up from a nozzle at the top, and coming down into the top basin, then dripping from all around that it finally reached the lowest one. At the foot of the stair mentioned was the fish and game dealers, with all kinds of deep sea and river fish, fresh from the water, lobsters and crabs, oysters, and periwinkles. All sorts of game meat in its season could be got there, rabbit and hare, venison and wild fowl of all kinds, were always on display on the counters, and hanging on hooks all around the walls of the shops. The market was a very popular trading place for the householders of the city, but it never regained quite its old appeal after it was burned in April, 1882, as many of the merchants set up business in shpps throughout the city, some of them never coming back, and as the city was spreading out to be a much larger place the New Market wasn't so convienient to the people living some distance away, that however doesn't mean that its usefulness had gone altogether, but some how or other it never seemed quite the same after the fire. The fire happened on a Saturday evening about eight o'clock, just as we were preparing to close our shop for the day. The market was thronged with the usual Saturday night crowds, many of them being young lads and lasses out frolicing at the end of the weeks work. All of a sudden there was a cry of fire, and every body began to rush for the doors, I stepped out of the butchers alley way in towards the middle of the market to take a look, so I could see the fire, and up in the gallery toward the east end of the building, I saw a column of smoke and flame making rapid head way to the front. The foreman put the account books in my basket and told me to take them home to his house, which I did, and then started for home, so I didn't see any more of the fire. My mother was out when I got home, she had gone to the market for her beef and vegetables, so we were somewhat uneasy until she came back safe. She told us that the people had just begun to run out at the time she was stepping into the door, and she was nearly knocked off her feet by the mob, so she stayed a while to see the progress of the fire, and had difficuty getting out of the crowd when she started for home. The soldiers were called out of their barracks to hold the crowd back as the police were unable to cope with thesituation. There were five butchers shops on the side of the market that our shop was on, and at least the same number on the other side, that were not much damaged, and during the short time that we filled the orders of our regular customers that always had their meat delivered at their doors, carpenters put up a board partition between the alleyway in front of these shops which could be used and the main area of the market, where was piled up all the debris from the ceiling and the supporting brick pillars. It took nearly two years to bebuild, so I was working there all the time nearly that the builders were working at it. There were windows inserted in the partition so that we could see all the interesting work of rebuilding. I worked with Mr. Davidson about twenty one months, and then decided that I world like a change, so when I was fourteen years old I got another job with a butcher in Bank St. not quite a mile away from the New Market and about the same distance from where I was then living. We had moved in the spring of the year previous to No.22 Carmelite St., the end of which street was at the top of the Green at which point was the rear wall of the market. The green was really a street, which had been in existance many years, two or three centuries perhaps, the houses on it were quaint and old fashioned, and it was paved with cobble stones, which denoted old times, all the modern streets were paved with granite blocks, which were a little larger than a brick. There was an old fashioned well built of stone with a small statue of a man on top of it right in the middle of the street and close to the rear of the market, and as the street was quite wide at that end it gave that end of it somewhat the appearance of a square. On Fridays the farmers's wives sold their weeks accumulation of butter and eggs, so that on these days it was a very crowed thoroughfare with the city wives doing their trading in that line. Carmelite St. was named after a catholic religious order of monks or friars, who in ancient times had monasterys all over Europe, they were very rich and powerful, owning much land. The burying ground of the monks was on the site of this part of the city, but it was before the city of Aberdeen extended to that territory. Once when I was at school some of us boys heard that workmen who were excavating for a foundation to support a new building had found some hidden treasure, so we went to explore one evening when the men had quit work, but all we could find in the earth that had been thrown up was some bones. I found the part of a jawbone with some teeth in it, and a piece of skull which I put in my pocket and carried home as a souvenir, but I quess I was very little interested in such gruesome relics, for I don't remember anything about what became of them. We were within a block of Her Magesty's Theater, and two blocks from the large joint station of the several railways coming in and out of Aberdeen then about three blocks away was the Alhambra Music Hall, which was a place of variety entertainment, or vaudeville as we call it here, so you see we were right in the midst of things in our new home. One night of the last year that I went to school I was tempted to go the Alhambra, which was not considered a very respectable place, by the good people of Aberdeen, so I felt that I was doing something that wouldn't be approved of at home. There is only one of the acts that was presented that night clung to my memory all the others must have sunk into oblivion soon afterward; the act was a representation of two old folk, a man and a woman, old and gray, sitting at a table in a plainly furnished room, they sang the old Scottish ballad, entitled, "John Anderson my jo, John". I thought it was great, and enjoyed it very much, and if there was any indelicacy displayed in any act during the whole course of the entertainment, I haven't the faintest recollection of it, as I have said this one act is the only one on the program that left an impression, so that I never forgot it. After I grew older I visited this place of amusement quite ofter and I can vouch for it being the truth that what was presented for the amusement of its patrons was not of the most refined nature, and many times there world be a performance that could be properly termed vulgar, and that has been the objectional feature of vaudeville every where at all times, although there were degrees of superiority or inferiority, of course. The same thing prevails in the movies today, and has a much wider influence on the public morals than ever the vaudeville show had, because the movie public is so much larger than that which attended vaudeville shows, and besides there were no children or practically none ever saw one, where as countless thousands of children all over the world are exposed to much evil influence, tending to break down all sense of modesty and good morals. About three blocks to the east of our house was the end of the harbor and that was at the foot of Market St.. You will see that we were situated at the hub of the city as it were, and that is what I liked about it, and this house that we had moved into had three rooms, so we seem to have been getting more prosperous, since my brother and I were both working now. Alexander Reid was the butcher's name that I was working with, we called him Sandy. He had the name of having a bad temper, and several boys told me that I wouldn't be long with him, and the longest time any boy ever stayed with him was one year, but I got along with him fine, by never speaking back to him when he was angry. He didn't have what could be called a bad tempr, although it was quick and hot while it lasted, but it was only a flash in the pan and was soon over. He paid me a regular weekly wage of seven shillings and enough beef on Saturday night for our Sunday dinner. He didn't do any killing himself, but bought his beef wholesale from some of the larger butchers in the New Market. He bought a good deal of it from Jeems Davidson my old boss. I used to meet him in the Market nearly every morning and I was allowed to drive Janet the pony that he kept for the purpose of hauling the sides and quarters of beef that he would buy to serve his trade. I was quite proud of getting to drive the pony, and Sandy used to let me take her out often to give her some exercise, so that was really sport for me as I got to ride her. and Janet and I became great friends. Just about the time that I went to work for Sandy there came a great holiday for every body in Aberdeen to celebrate the opening of the Duthie Park which had been in the process of making for about four or five years previous to this time. I think I was about ten years old when the first sod was dug for the making of it. Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria's youngest daughter came to Aberdeen to formally open the Park, so it was a grand event for the populace to witness. All the nobility in the North of Scotland and the south too very likely were there to do honor to her, and they paraded through the city on their way to the ceremony at the Park. I saw the Princess ***********when her carriage drove abreast of where I was standing, and that was the first glimpse of Royalty that I had so far. There was a grand parade of floats of all description, and there was a mob of people from all round the country came to the city to see the sights. There was a great display of fireworks at night on the south side of the river Dee, and an enormous crowd was seated all along on the bank of the river on the Aberdeen side to witness it. That was the first really great celebration that I had seen, so I was greatly impressed by it, bunting and flags were flying everywhere all over the city. Some time not a great while after that there was another celebration in honor of a victory won in parliamemt by the Liberal party. It was an act that was passed, called the Franchise bill, or act, which granted the privelege of voting to a great number of people that had never had the right to do so, until that time. As I understood it at the time, the land owners had the right to vote for each of his tenants, and this bill that was passed took away that privelege, so that the tenants could vote according to their own convictions. That was another slight advance in political freedom, and away from feudalism. Sandy Reid let me off for the afternoon to see the parade, and I got a good position up on the mast of a ship in the harbor along with a lot of other boys. In the procession were a lot of carriages, with old gray haired and bearded men, and to me that was the most interesting sight in the whole parade, they were veterans who had been in the thick of a political fight which had taken place in the forties for a cause similar to this one that was being celebrated. William Gladstone was Prime Minister when the Franchise act was passed, and he was the great Liberal party leader of that time. Sandy began to allow me to wait on some of the customers when I wasn't otherwise engaged, and soon I got so I could cut and weigh the amounts ordered, and I began to think I might follow that line of business. When Sandy went to the cattle sales, which he did more I think for the associations and pleasure that he got out of it than for any intention of buying cattle, as I have said he bought most of his beef and other meat from the larger butchers at whole sale, although, he and a business friend by the name of Low did go into the cattle raising business for a couple of summers at least when I was working with him.They bought young steers and put them out on rented pasture in the country to fatten and then when they were in prime condition they took them to the cattle sale and had them auctiioned off to the highest bidder. In connection with this enterprise, Mr. Low's boy who worked with him in the same capacity as I did for Mr. Reid. It was the custom for these two butchers, when they closed their shops at three o'clock on Wednesday afternoons, and drive out to the pasture to see how the cattle were faring, and more to give us two boys a pleasant outing than for any other reason they took us with them, and of course we enjoyed the trip immensely, but when we were on one of these excurisions we came to grief through our foolishness. It happened that Sandy and Mr. Low left us two boys in the pasture with the pony and spring cart while they went to another field where some more of them were, so after they had gone we thought it would be fun and help to while away the time, if we gave Janet a few turns around the park. It was no sooner thought about than it was done, I don't remember now if we had gone more than once around the field or more, but at the upper side of it was a little clump of trees growing on where the ground was a bit highter and it rose abruptly from the level ground, so when I approached it on making the turn I ran on to it with the left wheel of the cart with such a jolt, as to tilt us all over on the right, throwing us two boys on our heads, and poor Janet was thrown helpless on her side. We got on to our feet as quickly as we could and started to unhitch her from the cart, and while we were busily engaged struggling with the harness and trying our best to release her from the cart so that she could get on to her feet, Sandy and Mr. Low arrived on the scene, so our predicament can be imagined better than it can be described. I could have wished the ground would open and swallowed me whole, I felt so guilty, and when the men got Janet up she was limping a little, and that worried me still more. It happened that Sandy had a brother, who was a veterinay surgeon living close by and he went to find him, and brought him back with him, so examined the pony and walked her around some, and she seemed to get all right, which gladdened my heart. I expected to be discharged for that exscapade, but much to the surprise of both of us boys, there was very little said to us. Of course I was most to blame as the pony belonged to my boss, and I was responsible so I was surprised at getting off so light, but I guess he took into consideration, the fact that we were just boys, and subject to just such unfortunate occurrences, without any evil intent he decided that a reprimand along with some good and needfull advice would suffice, anyway that was how it ended, and I never tried a foolish caper of that kind again, although I had other troubles of a different nature from time to time through some foolishness of my own. Another unfortunate affair that I had was with one of Sandy's children, a little boy not quite three years old. His mother used to bring him down to the shop for me to tend him in the afternoons when Sandy was away at a cattle sale, so on one occasion of this kind, I was playing with the little fellow and he was having a great time letting me make believe, that I was cutting a piece of meat off his leg, which was bare. I was using the back of the knife, and kept repeating the performance for his enjoyment when without noticing one of the times, I made a slash between the knee and the ankle with the sharp edge of the knife, and I suppose cut him to the bone, which at that place is quite near the surface of course. He bled like a stuck pig, and it scared me sick almost, but I grabbed him to my arms and rushed with him to his mother, and of course she was also scared out of her wits almost, but there was no vein or artery cut so she soon got it stopped from bleeding, and it wasn't many days before it was all healed up. I didn't see Sandy that evening, so I had plenty to worry me until morning arrived when I knew I would have to face the music to the tune of perhaps getting fired. However when I finally did see him he was very light on me, so I thought he must have seen some good in me despite the fact that I had rather serious things to incur his displeasure, he knew very well though that I was very hurt over it myself and that naturally, I wouldn't be repeating the same thing again, and that I had gotten a good lesson. Still another contretemps happened to disturb my peace and contentment for a few days, and also caused me to stand very much in fear of a dog all the rest of the time that I worked with Sandy Reid. One day when I had nothing else to do but amuse myself in the shop while there alone, I had a visit paid me by a dog that day which belonged to a carpenter who had a shop on the street just below ours, and in an evil moment, I tied a large galvanized iron pail to his tail, and believe it or not I had no intention of letting him run off with it, but alas, regardless of intention on my part, when the dog felt the rope brought tight on his tail he bounded out of my grasp and out the shop door and down the street which was on a considerable grade at break neck speed. There happened to be a small child in the middle of the street at the time, and the rope came in contact with its legs and almost caused her to turn a somersault. I was much afraid that she was hurt, but luckily she wasn't, so I had no trouble on that score, but I had to reckon with Robb the carpenter and Sandy, I was sure I couldn't escape that. It was two or three days before I heard anything about the matter, but eventually Sandy asked me where the big pail was, so I had to tell him that I thought Robb the carpenter had it, so that led to more questioning , which brought out a full confession. I suspect that Sandy and Robb had hatched it up between them to have me go down after the pail which would give Robb a chance to give me a cordial reception, anyway that was what happened. Sandy ordered me to go and fetch it and that was some ordeal that took about all the courage that I was posessed of. Robb handed me the pail and said something not at all complimentary and when I turned around to leave he gave me a kick in the pants that sent me out into the street in more of a hurry than was necessary in the circumstances, but I was thankful the dog wasn't there because he might have taken a bite from the place where I was kicked and there by even up the score between us.

Along about this time in my career, I started going to a bible class, that met on Sunday evenings at six o'clock, in one of the class rooms of a public school, there were half a dozen of boys of our neighborhood attended regularly for two or three years. We were all chums, who spent most of our leisure time together, and this bible class, I look back upon as having a real good influence on our young lives. It was conducted by a man of about thirty years of age perhaps, and he head quite an interest in our welfare, there were at least thirty of us in the class. I guess I must have been about eighteen when I left it. Allan Talbot our teacher used to take out to the country every summer on some Saturday afternoon for a picnic, and a jolly good time we had on these occasions, playing football, and other games that young fellows enjoyed, and every Christmas he would give us a party in one of the rooms in the Y.M.C.A. to which our parents were invited, that was always a great time, a few of the boys, were selected to sing songs, and we would get up some kind of a little play and act it for the amusement of the company, then we always had tea and fancy buscuits just as I have described the children belonging to the Sunday schools got. I remember getting pleasure out of meeting one of the members of the class years later when I was working on the stone for the Schwab mansion at Peekskill, N.Y.. This mansion was builyt near the East River in New York city and is still occupied by Charles Schwab the Millionaire steel magnate. This old class mate was the same age as I to a day, both ou us having been born on April 11, 1869, although we never knew it until our meeting in Peekskill, when one day we were comparing our ages. He was married and his wife and children were in Aberdeen Scotland, and he intended going back after he made a stake, which I suppose he did. I never saw nor heard of him again after that job was finished and all of us gone from there. This old friend of mine told me that Allan Talbot had gone to the bad through drink, but I never knew what became of him. I was amazed at the news, as I had never thought that could possible have happened, but it goes to show how frail human nature is. During the latter part of the time that I was working with Sandy Reid, my mind was a good deal occupied with thoughts of making some change in my work, in other words I wasn't quite satisfied that I wanted to be a butcher. As a boy, it was all right but there were some objections to following the trade for life, although I might have done as well at that as I did at the trade of granite cutting. The thing that I most objected to as a boy was the long hours that I had to work, especially on Saturdays, when I had to work until after eleven o'clock at night, and it was more often twelve, midnight and sometimes past it before I would get home and to my bed. I remember there were several mechanical trades that held my fancy for a time. I thought once I world like to be a carpenter, then a cabinet maker, had my favor, and for some time I thought of the upholstery trade, and I even contemplated the life of a tailor, and thought of applying to my uncle for a place in his establishment but I finally dedided to learn the trade of granite cutting, and got a promise of a start at that trade in the spring of 1886. In March of that year I got a rather bad cold which confined me to bed and the house for about a week, and upon my return to work I found that Sandy had got another boy in my place, so he told me he wasn't needing me any longer. I asked him why he had got another boy, and he told me that he had heard that I was going to leave him soon to be a stonecutter, and he took the chance of getting this boy, as I would be leaving him anyway. I felt somewhat disappointed at losing my job before I was ready to get the one I had been promised, but I just had to make the best of it until I could get started on it. It was about six weeks before Grant & Watt the granite monument firm could put me on, but during thet interval I found something to employ me a part of the time at least, and be my own boss.. A boy by name of A boy by name of Jock Stephen whom I had known since I was five years old, having lived on the floor above his family in Gordon St. was a sort of a free lance, in the business of making a living and I don't think he ever had a steady job in his life, but did any thing in the way of odd jobs that he could pick up, that being the kind of life that he seemed to be cut out for. He would deliver packages on the days when the country carriers brought them to the city for the accomodation of the country people who had produce to send to customers in the city, there being no parcel post system in those days. He used also to buy eggs from the carriers and then peddle them along the house wives in the parts of the city where the working people lived, so that was the part of his trade that I took up. I joined my capital that my mother had furnished me with to his and bought eggs and sold them again at retail. We could sell just a little cheaper than the stores , so we didn't lack for trade as lots of the wives, were glad to save a halfpenny or a penny on the price of a dozen eggs. I had lots of fun trading with the wives, and I had gained quite a lot of experience dealing with the public as a butcher's boy. I was about half way through my third year with Sandy Reid when he let me go. and was getting ten shillings, and beef for the family Sunday dinner, and there was always enough for two days, the ten shillings was equal to two and a half dollars. Sandy had raised me a shilling every year that I worked for him, so I presumed at the time that he had about reached the limit of wages that he would be willing to pay a message boy, and got a younger and cheaper boy. While I was at the job of selling eggs, it happened one day about the time I got home around four o'clock in the afternoon, that a gentleman called at our house asking for me, and as there was no one at home, I met him myself and informed him that I was the boy he was looking for. He then asked me if I would come to the shop of Fyfe the hatter, and go some messages for the firm, so I gladly told him I would, and went along with him to the shop. They were first class hatters and catered to the best people, and dealt in nothing else but hats. Well I went the messages , which was to deliver several hats to customers out in the best residential section of the city, and the man asked me to come back on Saturday which was the next day, so I promised that I would, and on Saturday night when he paid me, he asked me if I would care to work with them regular. I thanked him for the offer and told him that I had a job to start at about the first of May, at Grant and Watt's granite works on Portland St. He said he thought I was making a great mistake in going to learn to be a stone-cutter and said that I seemed more fitted for some kind of business, and that if I would work for them, they would teach me the business, but my mind was made up and I just couldn't change it. I have often wondered if that wasn't one of the most serious mistakes of my life as I have recognized since then that I was better fitted for some kind of a business career than I was for any kind of mechanical trade. The truth of the matter is I was not endowed as some are with natural mechanical ability, and I only became a fairly good granite cutter after quite long experience at the trade, where-as if I had taken my choice of learning something in the mercantile line, I would in all likelihood have made more of a success, at least I have always felt that way about the matter.

About May 1st I commenced my apprenticeship at the Granite trade, and it was altogether a new experience for me, getting up every morning so as to be at the yard at six o'clock, and many a time I didn't make it before the whistle blew, which was the signal for going to work, and in that case I would have to climb the gate which was closed the minute the whistle blew. I would not be alone in this however, as there nearly always a few of the apprentice boys a little late. I am pretty sure that George Watt one of the partners of the firm would hear us as we sneaked into the lobby of the office to take down our time checks, but took no notice of us for a few minutes behind time. It wasn't so bad in the summer mornings, but in the dreary and cold winter mornings it would have been much nicer to have lain in bed until daylight which on the shortest day didn't come earlier than about nine o'clock. About that time of the year we had to work by gas light until that time and then went home to breakfast, and back to work at ten, to work four hours when the whistle would then blow for the dinner hour, which was from one to two o'clock, then back to work again until the whistle blew at five o'clock. We worked then nine hours a day, five days of the week and six hours on Saturday, when we stopped work at one o'clock. That was something I hadn't been used to and it was a very pleasant change, as I could then join my chums, in their games of cricket ot foot ball. Foot ball had become popular in the past ten years or so. I remember when I was quite a small boy, the game was in its infancy, so far as organized sport was concerned, and it took the fancy of young people by storm. Nearly every boy in Scotland knew how and practiced the game, from the time almost that they were able to kick a ball. We had what was called Association foot ball which is quite different from Rugby foot ball which is quite an ancient game and originated in England I believe. Asssociation rules governing the game is distinctly a Scottish game but it is now about as popular in England and Ireland as it is in its native environment. Unlike Rugby or the game that is played in this country, which is patterned after the Rugby game, the players are not allowed to touch the ball with their hands, and if it touches the arm even, it is declared a foul and entitles the opposing team to a free kick. I have played the Rugby game myself, and was captain of my team, until we tired of it and took up the association game, I was elected captain of that outfit too. We called our team the Gladstone Football Club, it being named after the Hon. William E. Gladstone, who was then Prime Minister of Great Britain, we boys being great admirers of the Grand Old Man. Our club was a member of the Aberdeen junior league, and we played a good many matches from first to last, and oh what glorious Saturday afternoons those were especially when we came off the field victorious, and how we used to enjoy fighting the battle over again after we had eaten supper and all of us assembled together in the evening again. Some Saturday afternoons we would suspend play ourselves so that we could attend a game played by teams of the Scottish league, whidch was composed of the best players in the larger places of Scotland. There were four major league teams in Aberdeen before I left home, they were the Aberdeen, my favorite, the Orion, the Victoria United, and the Black Diamonds. The Aberdeen was composed of fellows of the middle class, some of them college men, the Victoria United were mostly working men, while the personel of the Orion seemed to be somewhere in between those two. The Black Diamonds were somewhat lower in the social scale, they being mostly made up of stevedores, some of them being coal heavers, that was the name applied to the men who unloaded the ships of cargoes of coal, and a pretty rough lot they were, This Association foot ball game is called soccer foot ball in this country, that being an abbreviation of the name, and there is quite a good many teams, or used to be, in New England, and some other parts of the north. The matches are witnessed by thousands in Great Britain, just as foot ball and base ball is here. The first stone that I got to try my hand on when I started to learn my trade was a base for a headstone, and when finished, it was meant to be three feet or three feet and six inches long and I think a foot thick and a foot high. I had never tried to hit the head of a point or chisel before, so every once in a while I would miss and strike my hand, peeling the skin off, and it was some time before I was sure of my blows with the hammer, so that my left hand was contiunaly in a state of mutilation. I worked on that stone three weeks and four days, and finally got it finished, but it was much smaller than the required size when I got through with it. After I became proficient, and at my best I could do the same work in about two days. I was almost discouraged sometimes but stuck to it with dogged perseverance, and for a long time it seemed that the many different sounds produced in the stone shed by the various tools kept ring in my ears after I quit work for the day, and I got rid of that only when I was asleep, that however gradually wore away as I became adjusted to the noises. There were about twelve apprentices in that stone yard, so we had plenty of fun as well as work, and these days were very happy ones, although we had a long time to look forward to for the completion of the time we had to serve, before we could receive journeymen wages. Grant and Watt had a large yard and employed about twenty men besides the apprentices and a number of stone polishers. Polishing was unskilled labor, and the large surfaces were done by machinery, small surfaces were done by hand. The only machinery that was used at that time was for cutting columns. After being roughed off the columns were placed in a lathe and were brought to a smooth surface and the desired size, by steel disks as the column kept turning round in the lathe. I was paid seven shillings a week for the first year and it was customary to get a raise of a shilling every year until the end of the fourth year, and then I would receive at least sixpence half penny per hour which would be one pound, seven shillings and seven pence, half penny, equaling approximately six dollars a week. Doesn't that look like a complicated monetary system, compared with the decimal system. It is rather awkward to one not accustomed to it, but simple enough to those knowing it all their lives. It takes longer to count however and the dollars and cents are much more to be preferred.

At the first of the year 1887 when I had been about nine months at my trade, I with some others of my chums joined the Royal engineers, a military volunteer corps, of about a thousand men. That was good traning for us, and I enjoyed my connection with it very much, and I stayed in it four years, giving my uniform and acoutrements up the day that I left for America. We drilled in the evenings two and sometimes three nights every week for about five months, from February to July. The drills were carried on in our drill hall, from February to about the middle of May, then we went to the links for it the remainder of the time. Our training consisted of manual exercises, and military field drill. We also had training in engineering work, like making trenches and breast works, tying knots and building trestle, pontoon and barrel bridges, we made ground kitchens too. The opening of the out door drill season was always celebrated by the whole battalion going on a long march, in full dress. Our full dress uniform consisted of a red tunic with dark blue trousers which had a red stripe about two inches wide, running from top to bottom on the outside of each leg, we also wore leggins of black leather, and helmets with our insignia in clear shiny metal on the front of them and a spike at the top. We carried a haversack and a water bottle slung over each shoulder and securely fastened so they wouldn't dangle about by the belt that we wore. We carried a sword bayonet which hung from the belt at our left sides, and a Martini Henri Rifle. The belt and water bottle and haversack belts were pipe clayed. It was a pretty uniform, and the girls used to be proud of being escorted home after the parade by a young fellow in uniform.

One of the grandist patriotic celebrations that I have ever seen or taken part in was Queen Victoria's jubilee, that marked the fiftieth year of her reign. It was celebrated all over the British Empire, upon which it is said the sun never sets, Aberdeen being a fairly large city, a celebration on a very elaborate scale was staged, decorations and bunting was every where, and all the military and civic organizations took part in the gigantic parade down the principal street of the city, to the Castle Gate, quite a large square surrounded with buildings, and in the centre stood the ancient Market Cross, and in front of that was a fine granite statue of one of the Dukes of Gordon. The military headed the procession and the Royal Engineers formed a part of that. When we arrived at the square we were formed all around it, and at twelve o'clock noon we were ordered to give the Royal saluten and the massed bands of the military units played God Save The Queen. After that we marched back to our several drill halls where a banqu-et was awaiting us. Our officers were all at a table at the head, and the rank and file were seated at right angles, and such a spread as we had. Each man got two or three bottles of ale to drink with the meal, while the officers had different kinds of wine at their table. The officers furnished entertainment for us with songs and speeches, for an hour or so, and then they invited us to help ourselves as we pleased, but before going they invited us to help ourselves to all the liquid refreshments which was left over at their table. You should have seen the general scramble to get there first, any way it was only a moment before every decanter on the table was as a bone. At night there were fire works and a great bon fire on top of a hill on the other side of the river Dee. That bonfire was the largest that I have ever seen and was a sight really worth seeing, and I wouldn't have missed it for anything. It was the second pile that had been raised into the air for the purpose, the first pile having been set fire to by some unknown practical jokers a night or two before the date of the celebration. There were bonfires lit all over the whole Empire. In London where the Queen was they had a more magnificent spectacle than anywhere else of course and dignitaries were there representing every country in the world. It is said that the Queen's diamond jubilee which was ten years later, in 1897, and the sixtieth year of her reign, it was still greater than the Golden jubiilee but I was in America then and could only read about it. I believe we got a greater thrill our of such things as that as there was so little of a spectacular nature to be seen in those days. We didn't have the movies to portray in almost life like reproduction scenes happening an all parts of the world, until it has become commonplace.

And so my youth was being spent working hard, eating and sleeping, and at intervals some happy and pleasureable events happened to sweeten life for us. I played football and cricket, and went to see the football matches on Saturday afternoons and went to the theatre as often as I could afford it. I was very fond of the drama and light opera and have had the pleasure of seeing some of the best on the stage at that period. The first winter after I went to learn my trade, Bill Youngson, one of my apprentice buddies who lived near me, and I went to a dancing class for six weeks, three evenings each week. The class was conducted by David or as he was familiarly and popularly known as Davie Morgan, and he was a splendid teacher. He played the violin himself as well being able to put us through our steps, so between that and the manual traning and field drill that I practiced in the volunteer military corps I learned to comport myself with more style than perhaps I world otherwise have been able to do had I not received that sort of training. There is nothing like it to give a fellow the habit of walking with squared shoulders chest out and chin up. Well I got so I could do any dance that was the vogue at that period, but I never was crazy about dancing like many boys and girls I have known, never-the-less I always enjoyed the dance to the fullest when I went to a ball or party, but I had little notion of the public dances, and passed most of them up. My chum Bill Dobson or "Dobbler" couldn't dance at all, although he and I both occasionally went to a public dance. The employees at the stone yard where I worked had a ball every winter some time near the Christmas season, and those were always very enjoyable affairs. Those of us who were single fellows, and that included all the apprentices, had to find ourselves partners if we happened not to have a sweet heart, and I was one that always had to look over the available girls in order that I might make a suitable selection of a partner for the night. In those days it was customary for a fellow to present his partner with white gloves and a pair of dancing slippers, and by the time that we bought that and suitable articles for ourselves the ball usually left us all pretty well strapped after it was over. When Christmas came however or rather the New Year all of us apprentices used to get a present from our employers of five shillings, one dollar and a quarter U.S. money so that we were not entirely broke at that season of the year, after all. The early part of the evening at those balls was given over to concert music and solo singing interspersed with a comic singer or two, Pat Curran one of the stone polishers, who was of Irish extraction as you may presume by his name, He sang Irish comic songs, one of which I remember was entitled, "The Hat My Father Wore". Pat was born in Scotland, but by nature he was a carefree good natured rollicking Irishman.

I think it was in 1889 that I learnned to ride the bicycle, and I was then twenty years old. The old style bicycle was still in use, I mean by that the large front wheel and small hind wheel. The safety bicycle as it was at first called came out just a little while later, in the early 1890's. Compared with the old high wheeler it was well worthy of the title safety, as many a rider got thrown off the high ones, and not a few got their necks broken. In learning to ride I used to go down to the esplanade by the side of the river Dee to practice, and one evening I got the scare of my life. The esplanade was rather a narrow graveled road bordered with small young trees and made a very smooth to ride, so I was making good progress and thought I could turn around in the road, but before I could turn enough to go back up the esplanade I was headed to the edge of a steep embankment leading down to the water's edge, so just in time to save myself from a plunge into the river which, in all probability would have drowned me, as I was unable to swim. I threw myself off just as I was at the edge of the embankment, as I couldn't yet dismount in an orderly manner That was the last time that I did any more practicing by the river, taking no more chances of drowning. I had no bicycle of my own so had always to hire one, which was rather expensive for one of my limited means, but I was determined to learn as four of my chums were planning a trip to a small town about twenty miles from Dundee and was distant about eighty or ninety miles south of Aberdeen, The trades men's holidays which came about the middle of July was the date set for this jaunt, so we were going to be gone four days, from Saturday morning til Tuesday. We all met together between three and four o'clock on Saturday morning, just about sun rise at that time of the year, feeling light hearted with the joy of anticipation of adventure. It was a fine morning, and the weather seemed to be settled, for a dry spell, so it wasn't long before we were across the river Dee, by way of the suspension bridge, commonly known as the chain bridge, and into Kincardinshire, and about a mile from the bridge we came to the brae of Nigg, a hard climb and one which neither of us could get to the top without dismounting. I was away behind the others when I got off which I did by falling off as usual, and when I finally got to the head of the brae, my companions were all out of sight and as I couldn't even mount again without help, I feared that I was going to be left behind. It was now or never with me then, so I made several brave attempts and finally succeded, and from then on for quite a few miles I had fairly good going, and caught up with the other boys, very soon, and of course that wasn't hard to do because they were waiting for me. I was feeling very much elated over having mastered the mounting problem, and had no further trouble about that. It was a fine Macadam road and not many steep grades so we kept on our wheels pretty nearly all the time til we reached Stonehaven, sixteen miles from Aberdeen. We intended to eat a good breakfast there, but there was nobody stirring at that hour and all was quiet at the hotel That was the longest ride that I had ever taken at one time and when I jumped off the wheel my knees were so weak I almost dropped down on them, but it wasn't long before I regained my strength again and we started off on the road once more and about nine o'clock we rode up to a farm house and asked a farmers wife if she would give us something to eat, so it wasn't long until she had each of us supplied with plenty of sweet milk and scones, and being very hungry by that time we did ample justice to the meal. Then off we were again and by noon we arrived at Bervie, where we had a splendid dinner of roast beef, potatoes, oatmeal cakes, scones, with plenty of jam and honey, that was the first time I had ever eaten at a hotel and I guess it was the first for the other fellows too, so we felt quite swelled in the head I suppose as well as in the region of our stomachs, any way we were all ready to start off again in high spirits, intending to get to the end of our journey that evening. Along about five o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at the town of Forfar the county seat of Forfarshire where we had something to eat and a pint of ale. While we were resting there it came on rain, so there was nothing for us to do but go to the railway station and take the train for Aylith from there, that was some what of a disappointment to us as we would have much preferred to have ridden triumphantly into Alith on our bicycles, we were glad enough to arrive at our distination however under any circumstances. We were all rather tired after such a long and strenuous day, but after we had supper at the home of the parents of Alec Murray we felt much better, and went out to look the town over, and before going home to bed we visited one of the Inns of the place and found it crowded with Saturday night revelers, singing songs and having a general good time. We drank a couple bottles of ale or so and enjoyed the singing, and then started for home to bed. The Murrays didn't have room for all of us to sleep, so Bob Martin and I were billeted on one of the neighbors. We were very kindly received by the young couple occupying this house, who told us we could sleep in one of the two boxed beds in the kitchen. The man and his wife and the baby slept in the other. This was quite a common custom among poor folk, our hosts went to bed, while we waited in the next room, which was the only other room they had, and a house like that is what is called in Scotland a butt and ben, the kitchen being called the butt and the good room or parlor was the ben. Well, after they were snug in bed they called to us to come in which we promptly did, being very sleepy. The people couldn't see us from their bed being as I have said boxed in, so we were perfectly secluded from observation. Next morning when we awoke the man and wife were stirring about, so when we got ready to get up they left the room long enough for us to dress. That was my first and only experience of living conditions of that kind, but the kindly hospitality of our hosts, and the delicate manner in which the whole situation was handled, relieved us of any embarrassment what-so-ever. After breakfast which we ate at Murray's we all got ready for church, and then back to dinner, after which we sat around out doors smoking and talking, and enjoying the fine balmy Sunday afternoon. There was a little girl at the Murray home who looked to be about seven years of age, who won all our hearts by attractive manners and a loveable disposition, she was a most cheerful little child, despite the tact that she had both her feet cut off at the ankles by a grain reaper. She got in the way of the sharp knives before the driver of the horses could get them stopped. I had never seen any thing quite so pathetic before and she stands out in my memory more clearly than any thing else in the whole trip. I hope she got fitted up with artificial feet when she grew up. Next day, Monday we started out bright and early for home again after eating a hearty breakfast. We took the coast road, going back and our first large town was Dundee which is about the same size as Aberdeen, but not nearly such a handsome city as it is. Dundee is a great industrial center the principal industry being the manufacturing of Jute. All the buildings were of sand stone whereas the buildings in Aberdeen are of fine gray granite. After looking around Dundee for a little while, we started off again, and on through Broughty Ferry, to Saint Andrews the ancient University town where Golf, the Scottish game has been played for several centuries, and which was introduced into the United States in the early 1890's or late 80's, at any rate it was just about the same time as I came to America, and by the way, the Americans thought it was the most foolish game they had ever seen any body trying to play, and laughed it to scorn, in many instances, but in a very few years it gained in popularity, so that not a town or city in the country is now without a golf course. Alec Russell, one of my gang got married, in June 1889, when he was nineteen years old. I was about six months older than he and passed my twentieth birthday about two months previous to his wedding day. This was the second wedding that I had been invited to, my brother's being the first, five years before. Russell's wedding was held in a small public hall, so we had plenty of room to dance, and we kept up the fun till three o'clock in the morning, which was daylight at that time of year. After we broke the party, we boys all went down to the docks and walked around among the shipping till time to go home and change into our working clothes, and be at work by six o'clock. By good luck we had a half holiday that day, so that we could go and see the Wallace statue unveiled. It is a large Bronze figure of Sir William Wallace the great Scottish patriot and liberator of the people from English tyranny and oppression and made it possible for Robert the Bruce to reign as King of Scotland. That is more than six hundred years ago, since Bruce won his great victory over England at the battle of Bannockburn, when thirty thousand Scottish soldiers put to complete rout one hundred thousand of the English, I think only about twenty five thousand got back to English soil. The Marquis of Lorne, son and heir to the Duke of Argyle, unveiled the statue. He was accompanied by his wife who was one of Queen Victoria's daughters, Princess Louise. The Duke of Argyle is the chief of Clan Campbell, and although the clan system is now a thing of the past, the heads of the several old clans in the highlands of Scotland, still own the great estates, which are handed down from father to eldest son to this day. Princess Louise was the third member of the Royal family that I had been able to get a glimpse of. I saw the Prince of Wales when I was fifteen, when he with Princess Alexandra and two daughters came to Aberdeen to present the colors to the battalion of Gordon Highlanders who were stationed there, This honor was conferred for gallentry and bravery shown at a recent war, the Egyptian war I think it was. The Prince of Wales afterwards became King Edward the seventh, when his mother Queen Victoria died in 1901. A cousin of mine and me were standing about twenty feet from the carriage that took them to the Links where the presentation ceremony took place, I didn't go to the Links however so I don't know except from hearsay anything about that.

My apprenticeship at the granite trade at last came to an end, so I got quite an increase of pay and I was my own man, able to pay for my own clothes and anything that it was neccessary for me to buy, and like most young chaps I didn't save as much as I might have. There was a custom among aprentices just finished serving their time, of treating all the other apprentices to what we called a pay off, in other words a blow out. These affairs were held in a room of some small hotel, where there was a piano to accompany those of uys who could sing a song, one of our company, Andy Watt, one of the boss' sons was a good player and could accompany any song that was sung, without the music, as he did all his playing by ear. The one giving the party gave ten shillings, and the rest contributed generally a sixpence a piece. We had great times at these things, and I was at perhaps half a dozen of them altogether. After my time was out I stayed on where I was working till about the end of January next year, when I and quite a number of others were discharged on account of dull trade, and business being generally dull all over the city, I couldn't get a job. Then I began to think about going to America in real earnest, and finally made up my mind to go with three other fellows who were fired at the time I was. They were Bob Paterson, Andrew Wood and Joe Fraser. Wood and Fraser were both married, and Bob and myself were single, I was twenty one years old and Bob was several months younger than me, while Wood and Fraser were about thirty perhaps. We booked passage with Bob Davidson, a booking agent for a number of steam ship lines, and well known to granite cutters, many of whom booked with him, at least once. Some of them got enough with their first experience, I know we did. He booked us on the Beaver line, to sail on the Steam ship Kansas, from Liverpool England to New York, U.S.A. on February 21, 1891. I had about a week to get ready for my departure, and that week was far too short for the things I had to do and all the friends and relatives that I had to see and bid farewell to. My mother was very busy too preparing all my clothes and adding to my wardrobe the things that she thought I would need. I took as little with me however as I thought I could get along with, as I was sure I would wish to equip myself with different clothes as soon as I could after my arrival in the states, and being as all Scotts are supposed to be of a thrifty nature, I would want to wear out all my old clothes before buying any more. I think there was more difference then between European and American styles, both in outside wearing apparel and under clothes. In the cool climate of Scotland wool was worn next to the skin all the year round, at least by the working people, and if one were to wear that in summer in this country it would be insufferable, and simply couldn't be done. Back then every body in this country changed from thin cotton under garmets worn in the summer to thick woolen ones for winter, but now the custom is to wear the same summer and winter, although I personally have never been able to adopt to the custom, and that goes for plenty of people my age. The first chill blast of winter sets me digging in for my winter garments, which proves the old saying, that it is hard to teach old dogs new tricks. When the question of a trunk came up, in which to pack my belongings it turned out that a neighbor of ours had a leather portmanteau which he had crossed the Atlantic with many times, in his business of transporting Shetland ponies to America, and as he was no longer engaged in that occupation, he kindly offered to let me have it, an offer which I gladly accepted as it saved me the price of a new trunk, and really served the purpose better than the trunks that were in use in the old country. They were made for the gentle handling of British railway porters, and never would withstand the rough usage that they got from American baggage men. It was a sight for us to behold the way trunks were thrown about here, an old country chest, if articulate would have screamed in holy horror, at such heartless treatment, and many a Britisher has had his poor trunk smashed before reaching its destination. My last day in Aberdeen was a very busy one, as I had much to do, as is always the case at the last, but the only things I remember doing was that I went to see my grandmother and Aunt, and going to the Royal Engineers drill hall to give in my uniform, and the third was of leaving the house, for the railway station. My father and mother came to the station with me, and brother and sisters with a lot of my friends were there to see me off on the train, My father carried my portmanteau on his sholder, and when we arrived at the station there was a large crowd of relatives and friends of the other fellows there to say good bye to them. Besides the four of us there were two other fellows going but they were sailing on another ship. They were brothers by the name of Campbell, the oldest one had been there before, and we thought he acted in rather a superior manner because of that fact, so their company wasn't much appreciated by us. All the folk cheered and waved us good bye as the train pulled out of the station, and quite a number of the women were crying, so it was a relief to us to have it all over. The journey to Liverpool was uneventfull, and being at night we couldn't see the country. We had a short wait at Carlisle, just across the border in England, so we got off the train and had a lunch about midnight, and then on again to Liverpool where we arrived about three in the morning. We got off the train and saw that our baggage was all right we loafed around in the vivinity of the railway station till dawn which came about seven o'clock, we then hired a cab and drove to the docks where the steamship Kansas was to sail from, and we thought the cabby drove us all around Liverpool before he finally got there, I felt all right so far enjoying the novelty of travel and the sights of the English city. I was interested too in hearing the strange English dialect of the Liverpool people. We went to a cafe and had breakfast, after which we whiled away the time, till sailing time which was to be about twelve o'clock noon. Third class passengers at that time had to furnish their own pallet to put in their bunks, and the steamship company provided a blanket, they also had to furnish their own dishes, which consisted of a plate and table spoon, a cup and tea spoon all of which were made of tin, they also had to wash their dishes in cold water at a running faucet after each meal. About an hour before sailing time we sent Joe Fraser to the Liverpool shipping office to pay the balance of our fares, and he was to use his own money to do that, and we were to wait on the dock till he got back with the tickets. Something detained Joe so that he didn't get back as soon as we expectted and in the meantime a ships tender took all of us who were waiting on the dock out to the ship which was anchored out in the middle of the Mersey River, so there was nothing for us to do but get aboard with the rest of the people and trust to fate to bring Joe back before the tender cast off her moorings, but no Joe appeared, and off we sailed out to the middle of the Mersey where our ship lay. You may imagine our feelings of consternation, at leaving Joe behind, with practically no money, and all of our tickets in his pocket, but a kind provence was surely looking after us greenhorns that day as subsequent events will show. When we got aboard the Kansas, the queerest looking conglomeration of men, women and children were crowded on the deck, and such a hubub, everyone was trying to get the attention of the purser, and talking in several different languages. We very soon found out what the trouble was. Somebody informed us that the booking agents had oversold the accommodations, and it was unlawful for the steamship company to carry more than a specified number of passengers. This was good news to us as we didn't relish the idea of traveling with such an outlandish looking people. Our hope was that we would be sent back to shore and be shipped on another boat, so from that time on we pestered that purser to take notice of us and send us back with the others that he was selecting. Finally he said we would be sent back, and that was indeed welcome news, so it wasn't long before we all climbed down the ladder on to the tender again. There were three of four stow-a-ways that they had caught, and they were sent back with us. One of them made a hard struggle to remain on the ship but they lifted him off his feet and put his feet on the ladder and beat him on the hands, to make him let go of the rungs. I felt sorry for the fellow, for he must have been terribly disappointed that he failed in making the trip. Before we got to the dock we could see Joe Fraser straining his eyes looking to see if by any chance we were aboard the tender, and it must have seemed to good to be true when he finally saw us. Poor chap, the tears were streaming down his face, and from that time on he was the most home sick man I have ever seen, and he didn't get over it till his wife and children came out to him the summer of that year. I have very little detailed recollection of events during that Saturday afternoon, I can't remember whether we had been provided with a pallet or dishes before we started on the tender, to board the Kansas, but I think not. We now had time to look after that detail and I remember it was nearly dusk when we got to the dock where the Steam ship Lake Ontario of the Canadian Line was moored. We were all very tired after that a very trying night and day and I was beginning to feel rather far away from home, and was just a wee bit lonely and home sick, but being very tired it wasn't long after I got into my bunk before I was into a dreamless sleep, and didn't wake up till morning, and by that time we were out at sea. They said the ship sailed about midnight Saturday. I felt the motion of the vessel and knew we were at sea. We got up and it wasn't long before breakfast time. We got oat meal porrige, bread and orange marmalade, and oh how I wished that I was back home sitting down with my father and mother and the rest of the family to eat breakfast, and then get ready for church. Sunday was the only day that we all could sit down to the table together at every meal of the day, and I never knew the joy of family life until it was gone. I had a tin of corned beef that my mother had put in to a japanned tin box along with some other food that she thought I would enjoy better than some of the ship's food, so I opened up the corned beef. As soon as I smelled it my stomach rebelled on acount of the motion of the boat and I got as sick as a dog as the saying is. For three days I lay in my bunk and never tasted food, but after that I was all right and never seemed to have enough to eat, but all the I had that gnawing feeling of home sickness, but kept that to myself, and tried to make the best of matters, as there was nothing I could do about it, except grin and bear it. Before I took to my bunk for the three days however we had a diversion at Queenstown Ireland where we stopped to take on the Irish passengers. Quite a lot of peddlers, both men and women came out in the tender with them and they came aboard with their trinkets to sell, mostly cheap jewelry and black thorn sticks, or shillelaghs. They are named after the town of Shillelagh in Ireland where grows a fine specimen of oaks. The Irish use them for other purposes than walking with, and many a broken head at Irish fairs has been caused by contact with them in a free for all fight. We took on mail at Queenstown too but it mush have been second class matter as out ship was a slow one, and wouldn't be likely used for first class mail. Pretty soon we were off again and were soon out in the open sea and out of sight of land, which we were destined not to see again for a time, and some would never return again to their native land. There were not many English speaking people in the steerage, most of them were foreign speaking people, Russian and Polish Jews making up the most of the list. They were served with salt herring which they would eat raw, and we not being used to seeing people eat such as that had a feeling of disgust at the sight of them eating. They got other things to eat besides of course, but that seemed to be their staple food. We got stews and soups with beef and potatoes for dinner, oat meal porrige and eggs with bread and coffee for breakfast, and at supper we got tea with bread and jam or marmalade. I can remember only two persons distincttly or rather I should say three although one of them spent most of the time of the trip in the ship's hospital. He was an Irish butcher, rather a large stout man with a red face, he might have been any where between thirty and forty years old. He came aboard at Queenstown and was under the influence of drink, and after we had been at sea two or three days I guess he had begun to feel the lack of stimulants, and developed a case of delirium tremens. I think it was on the third night after we sailed that he became violent in his bunk, and drove his fist through a port hole which is covered with very thick glass. That cut a vein in his wrist and he bled profusely some of the ship's crew came down to our compartment and forcibly took him out of the bunk and carried him to the hospital, and all this happened while I was sound asleep, and as Bob paterson told me I was the only one of the thirty two of us in that compartment who didn't wake up. I chided him for not waking me to see the show, but he said I was sleeping so good he hated to wake me up. We never saw the Irish man again till we came to Sandy hook Light ship, off New York, when they let him out, poor chap, he looked rather pale and was very much subdued. I have often thought about him since and wondered if he got a lesson that he wouldn't forget. One of the others that I remember well was an Englishman by name Tom Kenyon, who told us how often he had crossed the Atlantic, I can't remember now how many time it was, but I remember very well being impressed by what he told us about America. He told us about many of his experiences, and things that he had done to make a living. He said he went out stump speaking in the political campaigns. The political parties at that time used to hire men to make speeches for them before election day. They were furnished with prepared speeches which they learned by heart, and delivered before the public at campaign meetings. He recited parts of some of the speeches he had learned for our amusement. He also could preach a sermon, and did, the second Sunday we were at sea. In-as-much, said he, as they are having divine service in the first class quarters of the ship, we will conduct our own service in the steerage quarter, and we did. We sung some hymns and old Tom preached. He used to advise us to read the good old book when we got to America and stay home at nights, then when we got ready for a trip back to the old country, we would be able to travel first class. I'm afraid he didn't practice what he preached as he was still travelling steerage himself. He was also something of a poet, and gave each of us a printed copy of one of his poems, but I lost mine long ago, and don't now remember what it was about. His American home was in Fall River, Mass., and he said he had been divirced from his wife, and she was still living. All in all we considered he was pretty much of an adventurer, and lived by his wit. The third man whom I remember , called himself a cattle-man, and he was returning home after a trip to England with a cargo of cattle. He talked to us some, but he didn't appeal to us much, as he was just a little too sophisticated to suit us who were rather self conscious of being green horns. He wore a suit of blue overalls all the way across, but before we docked at New York, he dressed up in a fine suit, so that he was hardly recognizable. He was really the first Yankee we came in contact with. When we were off the Banks of Newfoundland, we had a the good fortune to see two ice bergs. It had grown considerably colder just before we sighted them and the sailors said we were in the vicinity of ice bergs so sure enough when we came on deck one morning there they were in the distance glistening brightly in the sun light. That was a sight not granted to every one who crosses the Atlantic ocean, so we felt that we were lucky. They were a beautiful sight towering high above the water and the sun shining full upon them. After that we sailed into an ice floe and remained in it for some thing like twenty four hours, there was quite a swell on the sea, and the huge blocks of ice came crunching into the side of the ship, with terrific force, and we who were inexperienced were some what uneasy, fearing that a hole might be driven through the steel plating, but nothing like that happened or perhaps I wouldn't be telling the tale. We did however lose one of the blades of our propeller, which had struck one of the pieces, and that slowed up the ship, so that we were a little longer on the trip than we would otherwise have been. Not long after we passed through that experience, we ran into a thick fog, so thick that we couldn't see from one side of the ship to the other hardly. That gave me the most cause for uneasiness of anything that had occurred so far on the sea. There is a constant feeling of danger when one cannot see what is ahead. At any time a ship might come in collision with us, and in that event there would surely be some loss of life either on our ship or the other or both. The Ship's horn kept blowing I should judge about every half minute, which added eeriness to the situation, and the engines were cut down to half speed. We came out of it at length however and into clear skies again, and not long after that we sighted Sandy Hook Light ship, and the shores of America, and a welcome sight it was to us, I was becoming very tired of the monotony of life aboard an Atlantic Liner, although I might not have been so tired of it if I had been among the first class passengers. Our accomodations were the roughest that can be imagined, and our dishes were getting very dirty with grease that it was impossible to wash off with cold water and no soap. I had also slept all the time in my clothes, never having taken them off from the time that I boarded the ship till I landed and not even till I got to my destination, which was Barre Vt.. That was fifteen days that I had not had my clothes off, not even my shoes, and my derby hat I would keep on in my bunk to ward off the draught from my head. I was very glad to have the quilt that my mother made and gave me to keep warm in, because it was cold all the way over. There are no such conditions of travel now I believe, everything is furnished that the passengers use, bedding and dishes, and everything, the dishes are washed too, and in fact all service is rendered by the steam ship Co.. Soon after we passed Sandy Hook Light Ship we reached Quarentine, where we were all examined by U.S. government doctors, to see if we were free from disease and properly vacinated. They looked at our eyes and teeth, and examined our arms for the vaccination marks. I don't know if any one was rejected or not but us four boys passed all right. After that was over we made our way to the ship's dock in the New York harbor, but it was too late for us to get ashore, so we had to stay on board till next morning, when we were all taken to Battery Park where immigrants all had to be examined to be identified with the information about us that had been sent by the Steamship Co. in advance of our arrival. Often passengers are detained for various reasons and some times deported. We pass the examination all right and had a sufficient sum of money to warrant them letting us free. I had somewhere in the neighborhood of eighteen dollars, not much to start life with in a strange country, but I fully expected to get work in a short time. The customs officials also went through our baggage, but found nothing of a contraband nature. I was very much impress by all the uniformed officials whose hands we went through. I thought they were rather a handsome crew, and I heard some tall Yankee cursing to begin with, not at us however but in their orders to subordinates. They wore dark blue uniforms decorated with gold braid and looked very imposing to the poor simple foreigners. About noon an Friday we were set free on American soil and as we were getting pretty hungry by that time we began longingly to view the windows of the bake shops and eating places, and finally summoned up courage to enter an unpretensious looking cafe, where some nice looking pies were on display in the window. A good looking custard pie about an inch thick appealed to my fancy, although I had never tasted one before I was pretty sure it would taste as good as it looked. It did all of that, and I ate it with relish and washed it down with a bottle of beer, so that was the first meal that I tasted in America, and I found it to be good. We felt very much refreshed after that and started to look about us in the great city of New York. There were no automobiles in those days of course, but they had fine looking horses and heavy trucks. There were no sky scrapers either, as steel construction was still in the future. We saw the first Electric street cars that we had ever seen and that was a novelty to us. We whiled away the time walking the streets, but never went very far away from the harbor for fear of getting lost. The only person we saw that we knew was our cattleman friend of the ship, walking along the street as if he was perfectly at home which no doubt he was. We were to sail that evening on a boat to New London, and from there we were to entrain for Boston, so just about twilight we boarded the boat and pretty soon were on the tail end of our long journey. We were assigned to a bunk each and soon I was sound asleep, but was awakened about three o'clock in the morning just before the steam boat docked at New London, Conn.. It was dark but we were conducted to the railway station which was not far away, and there we boarded the first American train that we were ever on. We arrived in Boston about seven in the morning, and had breakfast, and about nine o'clock we were all aboard for Barre, on the Vermont Central Railway, This was Saturday the 6th of March, and it was still winter time. There was no snow in Boston that I remember, but when we got up into New Hampshire and on into Vermont there was plenty of it. That didn't look so good to us, but we had to take whatever was coming to us in the shape of weather or anything else for that matter. Being winter the country looked rather bleak and barren to us, and as we got up into the snow clad mountains of Vermont, it looked still bleaker, and although it was very comfortable inside the railway coach we knew it must be pretty cold outside. We arrived at Mt. Pelier, the Capital of Vermont about five o'clock in the afternoon and met a number of the boys we knew in the old country who came down from Barre to meet us. Some of them were boys that had learned their trade in the same yard as Bob Paterson and myself worked. Andy Duncan, Dave, and Jack Morrison, friends of mine took Bob and I to the Boarding house in Barre where they boarded, and we got a room downstairs with another family.

So at last we had arrived at our destination safe and sound and sat down to a bounteous supper of pork and beans, a famous New England dish and a regular Saturday night supper. After supper our friends took us up town and we called at the boarding house where Joe Fraser and Andrew Wood were. All the boys there were very much interested in the news we had to tell them of home, and our adventures on the journey. We were rather tired though and soon started back to our own boarding house, and it wasn't long after we got there when we went to bed. I remember it was very cold in that room, and as we had been accustomed sleeping with a woolen blanket next to us, it seemed like ice getting in between linen sheets, but we soon got warm and it wasn't long till we were both asleep, and it certainly felt good to get my clothes off once more. Monday morning we started down to the stone sheds to look for work, but it was Wednesday before we got a job. We were told to come to work next morning in a yard that was owned by a Scotsman and was promised twenty five cents an hour, nine hours a day and eight hours on Saturday. That was thirteen dollars and a quarter a week, and as we were paid monthly then it averaged about fifty five dollars a month. That was about the minimum wage and no more than a young green horn expected. Top wages at that time was two seventy five and in some cases three dollars a day. The price of board at that time was four dollars a week and twenty five cents a week for laundry, so that after that was paid we had about thirty seven dollars a month for other expenses, and one could easily save twenty five dollars a month, some of the most thrifty could do better than that, and with steady work one could save about a thousand dollars in three years, and then take a winter's vacation home in the old country. I worked fairly steady the first year, in five different yards. The first place I worked was the yard of James Cordiner, and I stayed about a month with him, and got discharged for spoiling a stone. that was hard luck, but I got another job with Fraser Brothers, another Scotch firm, I stayed there a few weeks but they had over estimated my ability and paid me too much money, so the only way seeming best to them was to fire me. I then went to work for the Vermont Granite Co. at 2.25 a day the same pay that I got in my first job. I got along fine on that job and stayed all summer and fall, then work got slack and I was discharged again, but by good luck I got another job very soon with a firm by the neme of Cole and Marchesi. Cole was an Englishman and Marchesi an Italian. I worked part of the winter there and the latter part with a man by the name of Charlie MacMillan. That was my first year in America, and I had gone trough a period of home sickness, as nearly every body does who leaves the old home and friends. Life was so much different in the small town in the hills of Vermont. The population at that time couldn't have been over four thousand, and modern conveniences were unknown. I can't remember if there were any street lights, but there may have been some on the main St. where the stores were. We had to carry a lantern at night if there was no moon, when we wanted to go any where. There was hardly anything in the way of entertainment, except visiting among friends, playing cards for pastime being the most popular amusement. We used to play cribbage mostly, and cribbage tournaments were held between two opposing teams, and the losing team would send away for a barrel of draft ale or beer, and when that arrived, we all assembled at one of the player's house and had a social evening drinking and singing songs, and having a general good time. Occasionally there would be a dance in a hall down town, and I went to some of them. There was a lodge of the Order of Scottish clans of America in Barre and they would have two or three dances during the winter months. The first winter I was there , and I might say the only one I spent there they had a masquerade ball, and I had one of Mr. Cole's daughters as my partner. We dressed as Western cow boy and girl, and we took the prize that was put up for the best representation. The first dance I went to was just a little over a month after I arrived in Barre. It was held on the 11th of April and the next day was the Vermont Fast day. I remember that night well on account of a heavy fall of snow which started while the dance was going on, and the next morning there was a foot of it on the ground, and this happened after the snow that had lain all winter was all melted away. On the 13th it became quite warm and the snow suddenly melted and ran down the mountain sides flooding the valleys. Barre was situated in a valley and had a river running through it, and it was soon a raging flood of water which came up to the stone sheds and floated tool boxes and some of the tools down the river. I had a new tool box, but the water didn't do much damage to the shed I was working in as it was situated out of reach of the swift current. That caused us to lose another days work besides the Fast day. I never was anywhere else in this country that a Fast day was observed, and I don't know whether it had once been observed in all the states of the Union or not, as I have never seen any reference in any historical literature dealing with old customs, so to make clear to you who may read this it was a day set apart for fasting and self denial, preparatory to the holy sacrement which was held in the churches the following Sunday. For all that I know to the contrary it may have been abolished in Vermont long ago. When I had been a little over a year in Barre I decided that I would see a little more of this country, and tried to persuade Bob Paterson to come with me to some other place to work but he wouldn't consent to leave there. I had a feeling that I didn't want to spend my life there like so many other Aberdonians were doing, so made up my mind one day in April 1892 to leave. I picked up my tools, packed my belongings in the old portmanteau and took a train that night for Stony Creek, Conn.. I traveled all night and arrived in Springfield, Mass. about day break where I had to change trains. I had time to eat breakfast and look around a little before the train left for New Haven, which is fifteen or twenty miles from Stony Creek. That was the longest journey that I had ever made by myself and I was rather wearied of the trip. I arrived at Stony Creek about noon, and had dinner, after which I enquired the way to the Quarry and found that I had to walk about two miles to get there. There was a rail way track went as far as the Quarry, so I walked the ties to get there. When I got close to the stone sheds I saw a rather stout man standing on the track ahead of me, and when I reached him I asked where I could find the superintendant, and he informed me that he was the individual, so I told him I wanted a job, but he said he didn't need any more men at present. That was quite a disappointment to me, as I was confident I would get one when I left Barre, but there was nothing left for me to do but go back down the track the way I came. I must have looked rather dejected, and the old man Mr. Holesworth was his name, called me back to him, and asked where my tools were and I told him they were at the railway station, so he told me to bring them to the works and he would give me a kit on Monday morning. My heart which was down in my boots came back to its rightful place at that, and I started towards the stone sheds to see if I could find any of the boys I knew. Jim Geddes a fellow who worked next to me in the shed where we learned our trade was there, so I was glad to see him. He told me to get my trunk and tools and have them hauled up to the quarry, and I would find a place to board at the big company boarding house. There was a large crowd of stone cutters boarding there, and some of them were pretty rough characters and hard drinkers, after every pay day which was twice a month. I loafed around all day Saturday till the men quit work at four o'clock, and that was pretty tiresome having no company, so I was rather glad to see Jim Geddes and his room mate a young Welshman about my own age come to the boarding house. I will never forget that Saturday night, because it seemed that hell had broken loose after the men got back from New Haven about midnight. They nearly all went there after supper and came home again about midnight, in different stages of drunkenesss. I was in a room by myself and never looked out to see what was going on, but at times I thought they were doing their best to pull the house down, and I was actually scared, never having had any experience of such rioting. I didn't sleep much that Saturday night, and when I went down stairs in the morning to breakfast Jim Geddes and Louis Griffith the Welshman told me about the incidents of the uproar. There was singing and dancing and some fighting to liven up things a bit. The stone cutters at that place were composed of English and Scotch mostly with a sprinkling of Irish and Italians and some Americans. The English were from the county of Cornwall, cousin Jacks they are nick named, but for what reason I don't know, unless it be because there is celtic blood in their viens, which differentiates them from the English of all the other English counties, they being pure Anglo Saxon blood. Mr. Holesworth was a Cornishman and that I suppose accounted for so many many Englishmen flocking to that job. I went to work on Monday morning, and got a stone with dentals, or block and space as they are some times called, and that being my first experience on that kind of work, I had a hard time of it. One day as I was working away I happened to look out to the end of the shed and who did I see but Billy Youngson standing there. He and I had gone back and forth to work together for four years when we were learning our trade. He had left for America a year before I did, and I certainly was glad to see him. He came on down the shed when he saw me, and when he saw what I was doing, he showed me how best to take advantage of the work, and after that I got along much better. I don't remember now whether Billy got a job or not, but any way he stayed there with us until we all came out on a strike in sympathy with the quarry men who had some kind of a grievance that caused them to strike. That was the first strike that I was ever involved in and I didn't like it much, but every one came out, and any one refusing would have been regarded as a scab. We stayed around two or three days and many of us left. Youngson, Geddes and Louis Griffith the Welshman and I all left together and went to Quincy, Mass. which is a large granite manufacturing city not far out of Boston. When we got there nobody would give us a job, as there was a great deal of uncertainty among the employers about labor trouble. There were rumors that the New England Granite Manufacturers Association was going to lock out their employees on May 1st, so it wasn't any use to look for a job anywhere in that territory. We hung around Quincy for about a week, and went into Boston every day taking in the sights of the city. We had a very good time, but with no job in view we didn't know hardly what to do, but finally we decided to go to Barre, back to where I started from not quite a month before. That was very distasteful for me, but there was nothing else I could do as I had very little money, and I knew if it became necessary I could get board on credit there when I couldn't any where else where I would be a stranger. Jim Geddes and I left Youngson and Griffith, and I have forgotton now where they went, but some time later I heard that Griffith had got a job on the stage as a chorus singer with an opera company, he was a fine tenor singer. The Welsh people are fine singers. Well when we got to Barre all the gaanite cutters were locked out and so far as work was concerned the city was dead. We got a dollar a day lock out pay from the union, which was enough to pay board and a few extra necessities, but before a month was out the union was broke financially and there was no more pay. Many of us went in debt for board, but about the first week of July there was an advertisement for fifty men wanted for laboring work on a reservoir which was being constructed at Bradford Vt. a small town near the border of New Hampshire came out in Barre, so I was determined that I would seek a job at that. I sent a telegram for a job and received an answer back telling me to come and bring 50 more men with me, but all I could get to join me was nine others, all young fellows and there were at least 500 men loafing. The union gave us each six dollars a piece to make the trip on, as it still had enough for small emergencies, but not enough to pay the cutters all over the country. On Monday morning we all rode over to Bradford in two surreys each drawn by a pair of horses, leaving Barre about seven and arriving at our destination between eleven and twelve o'clock. It was a pleasant trip over the Vermont hills and valleys and being all young chaps we had a lot of fun on the way. As soon as we got there we went up on the hill where they were digging a deep basin to be used as a reservoir for the town water supply. We found Mr. Manning the superintendant and me being looked upon as the spokesman fo the party, I told him that we were the men that I had brought with me to work, in response to his telegram so he counted us over and said he couldn't see but nine of us. I was somewhat mystified at that and counted them myself to be sure and we were all there right enough, he then asked me if I was going to work too, and I said yes, then he said he thought I was a padrone, that is an agent who gets jobs for men, they used to be found at the ports watching for the ships coming in with loads of immigrants. They would pilot them to construction jobs in different parts of the country for a commission, sometimes from the contractors as well as the men. I never hear of padrones now, and I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't any. Immigrants used to come into this country at the rate of over a million a year, but the restrictions are so rigid now that a very small percentage of that number can come in now. Well, to go on with my tale, it was just about time for the noon meal, and Mr. Manning directed us where to go for board, and the place that I with four of five of the others was assigned to was a farm on the edge of town just a little further out from the reservoir. The old farmer and his wife were about 55 or 60 years old perhaps, and very religious and strict, but the memory of my stay there is very hazy. It was just a make shift job for us and we were hoping all the time that we would get word from Barre telling us that the lock out was over, then of course Bradford would know us no more for ever in all probability. Mr. Manning put us to work in a gang all by ourselves and told us to take it easy, because he said our hands and muscles being soft from long continued idleness we would soom be played out if he put us in among the seasoned workers at the start. We were grateful for his consideration of us, not many would have done as he did, but we came to know that he was a fine fellow, before we got through there, he always treated all of his men fine. He set us to work with pick and shovel and a wheelbarrow each, so we jogged along easily for four days, then we were put in to the line digging in the hole with a big gang of other navvies, It was hard work but we enjoyed it, our work mates were rough and ready characters, and a type that we were unfamiliar with from close contact. There were a good few Irishmen among them, a few of them stand out quite vividly in my memory, one in particular, was a big broad shouldered black haired fellow with a fine ruddy complexion, a typical Irishman, rather ignorant but with a great gift of gab and conceited withal, Barney they called him. Another was a London Cockney, a quick active little fellow with a Cockney accent which fascinated us, and he always had plenty to say, "blime me". Then there was a westerner who was highly ammusing with his picturesque slang and lurid cuss words. We had one comic individual in our Scots crowd, little Alec Petrie pronounced as in pet. He was a dandy step dancer, and could dance jigs and hornpipes. Only four of us remained at the job, six of our gang left in about a week after we started. Out of the ten of us, I can only remember Bill Webster, Alec Cruickshank, Alec Petrie, Jack Gove, and myself, the other five might have never existed as far as I am concerned, for I remember neither their names or faces, they completely blotted out. I sometimes wonder if any of them are alive now. Sometimes it would come up a shower of rain so that we would have to take shelter in the tool shed, till it cleared off again. The boss found out that Petrie and I could sing and dance, so every time that we had to quit for a shower he would get us started up to entertain the gang. I used to sing Finnigan's Wake, and another Irish song about Micky Maloney which tells of some of his ludicrous adventures. The Irishmen in the gang were particularly tickled with those two songs. I would also sing some Scots and English songs. Petrie was the boy that could dance though and he would bring down the house, and he and I became favorites with them all for our entertaining qualities. We paid $3.00 a week for board and the town paid 50 cents for us which gave the people we boarded with $3.50. We had six dollars a week clear out of which we paid .25 for our laundry work, so we were doing pretty well financially. There were only four of us stuck to the job till the lock out was called off in November and at that time we got a report that the trouble was settled, so Petrie, Gove and I left and took the train back to Barre, leaving Webster behind working at the building of a brick filter inside the reservoir, he had a better job at that than if he went back. He was the only cutter among us that had learned to build, the rest of us all having learned the trade in monumental yards, where-as he had learned in a builder's yard. He got $4.00 a day all the time that he worked there. Well when we got back to Barre we found that it was a false report that we had received, so we felt badly disgusted about leaving our job, however we went back to Bradford and the Boss took us back, but we only stayed a little over a week as we got a true report this time that the men in Barre were going back to work. We went back again and got a job, but I didn't stay more than a month. I found that I didn't like Barre any better than I did before so Bill Youngson who had drifted in there when the lock out was settled joined me in setting out for Concord N.H. where we got a job with the New England Granite Co. who was at that time working of tha stone for the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.. That was one of the best jobs in the country and it took a good stone cutter to hold down a job there. Every stone had to be as near perfecton completion as human skill could make it. Youngson and I got a very large platform to cut and we managed to get by with that, but the next stone that I got was too complicated for one of my limited experience, and I soon came to grief with it. I was unused to diagrams of building stone and this stone that I had was in the shape of an L somewhat and before I knew I was making a mistake I had drilled away the tail of the L. I felt terrible bad about that and hated to call the boss, as I was pretty sure I would be fired, but I screwed up my courage and called him and fired I was sure enough. When I told Youngson what had befallen me he deciided that he didn't want to stay on that job any longer either, so picked up his tools and quit to follow my fortunes where ever we might be lucky enough to get a job in the dead of winter, as it was then just on the eve of Christmas. George Fettes or Dod as he was called, one of our old apprentice buddies in the old country was working there too, so he and his room mate both picked up and left too to go along with us. We enjoyed ourselves in Concord during the Christmas season with friends we had made in our short stay. There were a number of Scots people there, that made us welcome in their homes of an evening, and during the festive season they had some rather enjoyable times to which we were invited, and one night we went to a ball. I think it was the Knights of Columbus that had the ball, and way it was an Irish affair and I got acquainted with some very jolly Irish girls and enjoyed dancing with them. Youngson and I had the honor of escorting two of them home after the ball was over, but not exactly at the break of day as tha song has it. In the mean time we had been writing and wiring to several places for jobs, and as National head quarters of the granite cutters union was in Concord then we kept in close touch with the office in the hopes that some word would come in for men wanted at some branch of our union. One day in the first week of January we got an answer to a telegram we had sent to Hallowell Maine, telling the four of us to come to work, so as soon as we could do so we started on our journey for that old town. It was very cold weather and plenty of snow on the ground, and when we got into Maine it looked very bleak to us. We spent one night in Portland Maine on our way, and got a cheap room for the night and off again in the morning for Hallowell where we finally arrived and got our trunks to a boarding house, which was kept by the policeman of the town, Judson Irish. His wife and family were dandy people, and they had a big housefull of boarders, nearly all of them working on the Kennebec river cutting and storing ice. They were a crowd of men such as I had worked with on the reservoir at Bradford Vt. rough and ready for the most part, and it was quite entertaining to hear them talk in the smoke room in the evenings. This was January 1893, and at that time of year trade in general was dull. There was no minimum wage in our trade, and we had a sliding scale of wages that ranged from 19 cents an hour up to $3.00 a day, but not many got the highest pay. Us four Scots boys got 21 1/2 cents an hour which was $1.94 a day, pretty small but better than nothing, and we were glad to have a job. The Kenebec House where we boarded was a big rambling old house with stone steps, the ends of which were joined to the wall with the other ends toward the side walk. Only very old buildings had that kind of approach to the front door, and this old building had at one time been quite a grand house. The family had a piano and we used to be invited into the parlor nearly every night to have a good time with them. There were Mrs. Irish, a fine motherly woman and a son about nineteen or twenty years old, a handsome fellow he was, and while we were there he got a position as an attendant at the State Insane Asylum of Augusta Maine which is about a mile and a half from Hallowell. There was a daughter about sixteen, she played the piano, then a boy about twelve or thirteen, and last the idol of all of us, little Bernice. Mabel Ladd was the hired girl who helped Mrs. Irish with the cooking and waited on the tables. She used to be included in the merry parties that we had in the parlor many of the long winter evenings. Mabel had a beau, although we never saw him, his name was Flagg and we used to tease her unmercifully about him. There was a patriotic song that we used always to sing about our old flag, dear flag, and we never missed singing it for her benefit, and it never failed to produce a great deal of merriment at her expense, but she always took it god naturedly. On Sunday nights we all attended a society of Friends. Quakers I think they are, they used to give testimonies of their christianity, and how they came to be saved. We enjoyed the singing and got some amusement hearing some of the testimonies. Jud Irish the boarding boss got saved while we were there, but he turned out to be a weak brother and fell from grace some time after that. Altogether we spent a good winter there, but along in March the company cut our wages down to 19 1/2 cents an hour and we couldn't stand for that, so we left and got a job with a company in Augusta which is about a mile and a half from Hallowell. We got 2.75 a day there working on a job for New York city. I got a bad cold while working there and was laid up in bed several days and and that was about as lonesome a time that I ever spent. Youngson brought my food to me, but he was at work all day and no one else poaid any attention, but I suppose the boarding house people were too busy to give much thought to me. I got all right again however, and went back to work, but we didn't stay on that job much longer. I went down to the coast of Maine and got a job at Hurricane Island, with Booth Bros. who were heads of the Hurricane Isle Granite Co. This is a very small island about fourteen miles from Rockland on the Maine land. The inhabitants were all connected with the granite works and quarry so the population was very small, there probably wasn't more than four hundred on the island all told. When I got there I felt that I had reached the jumping off place. There was no where to go in the evening and nothing to see but the sea on all sides. I got very tired of it and was eagerly looking forward to getting a job at Vinalhaven which I had been told was a fine town of about 1500 population. Vinalhaven is a pretty little town on Fox Island about four miles further out from Rockland. One day about noon I boarded the Governor Bodwell which called in at Hurricane Island on her way from Rockland to Vinalhaven and went across there in Quest of a job with the Bodwell Granite Co.. There was a young fellow there that I had got acquainted with at Hallowell had been writing me keeping me posted about that job, and he had written to me advising me to come over, and was pretty sure that I would get on. My trip ws entirely successful so I went back on the Boat on her return trip, settled up with the Hurricane Island company and left the next day. I got board at the same place as my friend Herbert Ryder was and roomed with him. I had made his acquaintance at Hallowell, he was a quiet rather studious fellow nearly my own age, a good stone cutter but slower at turning out his work than I was. We worked by the piece on this job, and I was glad of that because we were not hurried at our work, so that gave me a fine chance of becoming more proficient. Well this small town of Vinalhaven was destined to be my home for 10 years of my life although I wasn't there all of that time. That period of my life I believe was the happiest of my experience. There is where I really began to like living in the U.S.A.. We were a little community isolated 16 miles from the mainland with daily communication to and from. Two Steam boats the Governor Bodwell and the Vinalhaven took passengers on and off the Island, the Bodwell made two trips daily except Sundays and the Vinalhaven made one. It did business between Stonington, Deer Island and Rockland, touching at Vinalhaven and Hurricane Island. Deer Island is 18 or 20 miles further out in the bay, and we used occasionally to have moonlight excursions to Stonington where we would spend the evening dancing, returning about midnight, arriving home about 1:30 pm. Those were great frolics for us young lads and lasses on a warm summer night with a full moon shining in a clear sky. Romance was in the air on those trips and life seemed pretty good to life. The people of Vinalhaven were good to live among, most of them getting their living out of the granite industry. A few made thair living out of the sea, fishing and catching lobsters. There was a good public school there and the people were well educated. The town supported a fine band, and they gave band concerts in a nice artisitc little band stand on summer evenings. They always provided music for celebrations of any kind that were held on the island. I made some of the best friends that I ever had in my life there. Herbert Ryder and I didn't stay at the boarding house that we first went to very long, we didn't like it for some reasons so we found another place that turned out to be just like home to us. There was a good little library in the town too and I got all the books that I wanted to read in the long winter evenings. That was my pastime mostly, but some times we played cards, checkers, or parchesi which was a popular game back then. Al Davis the boarding boss and Mrs. Davis joined in most of our fun, and grand times we used to have. On Sundays in the berry season we would all take lunch and spend the greater part of the day picking wild strawberries, blue berries, black berries or raspberries when in season. The boarding mistress would preserve them so that we always had plenty of good homemade jam the year around, She was a dandy cook and I believe hers was the very best table that I ever sat down to in all my experience of boarding, and I had 14 years of it. In the fall of the year we enjoyed clam bakes at the rocks, on a Sunday occasionally. We went to the mud flats in some little cove and dug our clams on Sunday morning, then after breakfast we started out for some sheltered rocky place on the shore, and built a roaring fire with the drift wood washed up on the shore. The fire was made in a small crevice of the rocks and kept burning till it was about red hot, then we spread a good thickness of wet sea weed on the hot surface of the rock and laid our clams on top, covering them with another thick layer of sea weed. I don't remember now how long it took to cook them, but it seems to me that it was about 15 or 20 minutees. When we ate enough of the clams and crackers, we would top off with doughnuts, pie and cake washed down with steaming hot coffee made over a fire on the shore. Those were picnics that will live in my memory if I were to live as long as Methusela. Another great feast was a lobster boil. A select party of fellows would make a deal with one of the lobster fishermen to bring us enough short lobsters to feed the party. A short lobster is any size 10 inches and under and it was and likely still is against the law to bring them in. At the time I went to Vinalhaven the Bodwell Granite Co. had just started to cut the stone for the Washington Post Office, which was built on Pennsylvania Avenue but it is now superceded by a new one, built somewhere near the Union Station and the Nations Capitol Building. It was sometime in April that I went to work on the job and I was liking it the best of any job I had been on in America so far, but in August of that year 1893, just five months after Grover Cleveland was inaugurated into the Presicency there came an industrial depression over the country, caused by a money panic. It seemed to me that it came without the slightest warning, but that I guess was due to my ignorance at that time of politics and the happenings of the financial world. I didn't keep well posted at that age, not being much interested in reading the newspapers then. Anyway the panic hit the country like a thunderbolt. Business was apparently good, when the money of the country got so scarce all of a sudden there was not enough for people doing business to meet their pay rolls with. The Bodwell Co. like most large concerns at that time paid off monthly and held back 15 days. In other words if one went to work on the first of the month it would be the 15th of the next month before one received a cent of pay, and the 15 days of that month was kept back, we called that our lie time. Of course the company paid that at the expiration of service, and it made a nice little nest egg at the final settlement. There was a large crew of cutters, nearly 400 besides a large number of quarrymen and paving cutters employed by the company, and it looked at first that we would all be thrown out of employment when this money panic struck the people but by accomodating ourselves to the proposition made to us by our Employer the majority of us remained at work. By agreement made between this company and the Vinalhaven branch of the Granite Cutters National Union by which name it was known at that time ( since then it was renamed and is now named the Granite Cutters International Assoc. ) and the Bocwell company we received monthly payments, so the proposition put before us was that the only way in which they could carry on the work would be to defer payment of wages for an indefinite time. We consented to their request and most of us remained at work under a rather vague understanding that business would become adjusted to conditions by Christmas, at which time it was thought they would be able to pay us in full. In the mean time the married men who had their homes there got the necessities of life at the Company store and the single men mostly boarded with those of the married ones who kept boarders, and the Company advanced us what little pocket money we needed, so by the time Christmas arrived things did shape up so that we got paid in full from the first of August to December 1st, and when we did get it we all had more money than we would have if we had been getting it every month. In March of that year 1894 I became a Master Mason, something that I had wished to be even before I left Scotland, although I have always been rather pleased that I joined the order in this country instead of at home. My affilliation with masonry has always been a source of pleasure to me. Lodge meetings were better attended then than they are now, as there were fewer attractions of other kinds to entice people. Today the automobile, the radio and the movies take first place in the choice of entertainment, so all the fraternal societies have suffered neglect since the advent of these sources of entertainment. We finished the Washington P.O. job sometime during the winter of 1894 and '95, and in the spring of '95 we started on another Post Office for Buffalo, N.Y. It was cut out of Jonesboro, Maine granite which was a rather pretty pink color. The Bodwell Granite Co. owned a quarry there but had no stone cutting plant, so they brought all the stone to Vinalhaven in barges, and it was like carrying coal to Newcastle, bringing granite to Vinalhaven. That was a good long job too so we had another extended spell of work which was very pleasing to me as I had grown to like the island very much. I took part in all the social activities of the young people of the town. We used to have parties and dances and occasionally something doing at the church. The first summer I was there the church had a cantata in which I took part, there were quite a number of us young folk took part in that, and we had a dandy time at rehearsals and put over a fine entertainment. A musuc master from Massachusetts by the name of Vinal who was a native of Vinalhaven, conducted the choir, and he was a very good one so I learned some more about music than I knew before. We had a good baseball team which belonged to the Knox County League, and many a good game we used to sneak off from our work to see on fine summer afternoons. Horse trotting races was a favorite sport too, and there was a good race track about three miles from town. Quite a few of the citizens owned good horses and a good deal of rivalry existed as to who had the best horse, which provided a great lot of excitement at the races. In the winter we had plenty of amusement, skating, toboganing and ice boating. To me the last named sport was the best of the three. The boat was low and flat and carried a sail, it had three steel runners like the keels of skates, two in the front and one behind to steer the boat. They sailed over the ice as fast as the wind almost, and in a high wind it was the fastest mode of travel that I had ever experienced. We used to go out sailing occasionally, sometimes in a row boat and sometimes in a sail boat. Herbert Ryder was a very good sailor and could manage a sail boat very well, having been brought up among them all his life. One Sunday he and I went out in a sail boat early in the morning carrying a lunch with us, as we intended being gone all day exploring among many of the small islands scattered around Fox Island. It was a fine summer day and a good breeze blowing so we enjoyed it immensely, and about noon we went ashore and ate our lunch, after which we went aboard our craft again for further exploration. Not long after that a thunder cloud came up, and before we knew it a squall of wind was headed toward us, as we could see by the disturbance on the water just a short distance from us. It took some fast work on the part of Herbert to keep the boat from capsizing, I was steering and working under orders for I knew nothing about sail boats, and was terrified that we would be turned over and drowned, and believe me it looked very doubtful for a few minutes. I thought of an uncle of my mother's who was drowned not so very far from there, while boating or swimming I'm not sure which, but I have heard my mother speak of the tragedy. He had come out to this country as I did to cut stone and was working on Dix Island, Maine and it looked as though I was to meet the same fate, but we weathered the storm allright and made for shore. When we reached shore there was a narrow inlet at the place which we decided to enter and explore, and the tide being about its height we had no difficulty in entering, and rowed inland quite a piece. When we got through exploring, and after resting a while, we started down the creek again. The tide had ebbed considerably when we got near to the outlet so that there wasn't water enough between the rocks which were by this time exposed, to sail our boat and we had great difficulty and it took us a long time to get out to open water, so when we finally did get out it was getting near evening and the wind had gone down so much that our sail did us no good, in fact it was dead calm. We were at least twelve miles from Vinalhaven so there was nothing else to do but row home, and it would be dark about eight o'clock. It was quite a heavy boat so we hadn't nmuch powerwith just two at the oars, any way darkness overtook us before we got more than about three miles on our way. As it got so dark there was no way of guiding our course, we decided if we saw a light we would land our boat and procede in its direction, so after we made that decision it wasn't long untill we saw a light some distance inland, so we steered the boat for the shore, moored it to a rock and started walking in the direction of it. We didn't see it again for some time, and thought the people had perhaps gone to bed, but just as we were about giving up hope we again saw it and made a bee line across the fields for it. The farmer who lived on this place was a man by the name of Calderwood whom we knew by sight, so we asked him if he would lodge us for the night, he said he would and his wife prepared supper for us which we were very glad to get as we were rather hungry, not having eaten anything since noon and it was by this time about nine o'clock. After answering a lot of questions put to us by the farmer and his wife about what we had been doing and all where we had been we were shown to our room and soon were asleep. In the morning we got up and had breakfast and bade the farmer and wife good bye and expressed our appreciation of their kindness to us, and started down to the shore to our sail boat. We had to row home all the way and took our time about it, so that it was nearly one o'clock when we got home, and on the way up Main Street we met our boarding boss and wasn't he glad to see us. It had got noised abroad that we hadn't returned, and some of the fellows were about to get up a party to go out and search for us. They knew of the storm on Sunday afternoon and were afraid that our boat might have been capsized, but our appearance dispelled their fears. I was never so glad in my life to be back safe among friends, and that was the last trip I ever took of that kind. On many a Sunday morning I got up about sunrise and took a solitary walk around the island by the road, and would get back before breakfast time. The road waa about eight miles and was inside all of the creeks and coves. The island itself is about twelve miles long by about eight miles wide as well as I remember. I enjoyed those walks by my self in the early morning getting the sea breezes, and watching the ships from high point of the road. I had heard fellows speaking of walking round the island, but I never met any of them on my jaunts and no one ever accompanied me, so I had the road all to my self. I was accustomed to walking in the old country, as mostly every one was. My gang always took long walks on Sunday afternoons, but I found that people in this country were not very fond of that excercise, and now that every body and his wife owns an automobile we are forgetting about that sort of exercise to the detriment of our health.

In 1894 I joined the A.F. & A.M. being raised to the Sublime Degree of Master Mason, and I consider that one of the best things I ever did. We used to have well attended meetings, and all the members were enthusiastic, and devoted to the work of the lodge. I was greatly interested in the activities of the lodge and studied the degree work very didigently, so that I became quite proficient. I don't remember whether it was the same year as I joined or the next, that I was elected to the office of Senior Deacon, but however that was I held it until I left the Island in Nobember of 1896 to visit Scotland. More had to be committed to memory by that officer than by ony other except the worshipful Master, and I had to do a lot of study before I could recite my parts without mistakes. As I expected to come back after my trip I was retained in my office and took up my work again in the lodge upon my return. In the winter of '94, 95' I joined the Order of The Eastern Star the ladies auxillary of Masonry, and we had rather jolly times in that as the ladies were very active in the social side of life, and promoted lots of entertainments in the lodge room on winter evenings. I used often to be on the program for a song or two, and there was some excellent talent in that little place, so there was no dearth of ammusement there although we had to furnish it ourselves. In the early spring every year the New England towns held town meetings for electing Select Men who were the governing officials, and we got a holiday for the purpose of attending those meetings. Great interest was taken in the affairs of the meetings and the town hall was always crowded by the men, women then had no vote, and had little interest in politics. Every body who paid taxes had a vote on all of the propositions coming before the meeting, and we elected all of the officials by written vote on a piece of paper, and the votes were counted right then in the presence of all. Apropriations of money were voted on in that way too, and every one had the privelege of the floor to speak for or against the proposition. It was a real democratic system, but it would hardly work in a large community. I remember one election in particular that excitement over the rivalry between Dan Glidden and some other man, I have forgotten now who he was, but I was among the supporters of Dan and we won the victory for him and made him first Select man which is the same as mayor. The night of that election we had a great celebration at the farm of Dan's brother Israel. About 30 of us drove up to North Haven at the other end of the island to the farm accompanied by a lot of our girl friends as well as some married folk. We got plenty of the best to eat and drink, and there were some fiddlers there to furnish music for a dance. That was a merry night, and we didn't go home till the wee sma' hours next morning, and that same morning at seven o'clock Alec Fraser, another Scotsman and I boarded the steam boat and went to Rockland, Knox County seat, where Federal court was in session, to get our second and final citizenship papers. That was in March 1896 nearly 39 years ago, so I was then made a full fledged citizen of the U.S.A. and was entitled to all the rights and priveleges there-of. My first vote in a presidential election how-ever was cast in November of the preceding year, before I had been quite five years in the country, but they were not particuar about that and said I could vote. They didn't have the secret ballot then and there was more fraud in elections then I think than there is now, although I suspect there is plenty yet. My first vote was cast for William McKinley the 25th President of the United States, he was opposed by the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan, who was advocating free coinage of silver, placing it on a parity with gold. McKinley was a Gold Standard man, so that was the was the principal issue of the campaign, and it was one of the most exciting political battles in my time. Bryan was a great orator, and that great gift of his had really more to do with his great popularity, than the monetary principal that he was fighting for had, because the man in the street I think had very little understanding about the subject. We seem to be in the same fog of misunderstanding today regarding money and most people who think about it at all are convinced that the wisest of our financiers and Statesmen do not know all about it. Any way we are now off of the gold standard now since President Roosevelt our great humanitarian President came into office, and started to deal us a new hand which will and is showing more consideration for the under priveleged as against the priveleged few, who have been mercilessly exploiting the people with all kinds of schemes to extort exorbitant profits. In the fall of 1896 business on the island got dull, we had just finished the Buffalo Post office job, and quite a number of granite cutters were discharged, among them being myself. I had been hearing from home that my father's health was rather poorly, and my mother had expressed herself as wishing I could come home, so when I got out of work, I suddenly made up my mind to go with a fellow by the name Jim Beaton who was going. It was on a Monday that I dedided the matter, and Thursday the third week of November we left Vinalhaven for New York. We arrived there on Friday, booked passage and sailed for Liverpool Saturday morning. We had a rather rough voyage all the way, and I was deathly sea sick again, so that I wished many times that I hadn't started on the trip. Beaton was sick too, and we lay in our bunks bemoaning our fate for three days. In the afternoon of the third day, I began to feel better, and was lying half listening to the drone of two men's voices in conversation together, then I recognized one of the voices to be that of an Aberdeen man and the other was an Englishman. I finally got up, so did Jim Beaton and sat on the end of our bunks, and it waasn't long till we joined in the conversation, getting acquainted with the two fellows. That was the last of our sea sickness on that trip and from then on our appetites were hard to appease, meal times were too far apart to suit our convenience. There was nothing of a startling nature happened during the voyage, except that one day I saw a young man about my own age nearly washed over board. The sea was running high and we were shipping a lot of water over the deck, I was standing along with some others at the head of a stair that went down to our quarters when one of them undertook to go to some other part of the deck and when he had gone running about fifteen yards a big wave boarded, and knocked him off his feet against a deck house, when the ship lurched back again we looked for him to be washed over board, but instead he struck the rail of the ship near the top and when the ship righted itself he was able to get on his feet again and ran back to where we were none the worse except that he was drenched from head to foot. I think my heart stopped beating for a moment when I thought he was going over board. Thanksgiving day happened to be that week and we got a good Thanksgiving dinner, which revived memories of the U.S.A.. The trip was very near at an end then, and I was glad of it, when we sighted the shore of Ireland the next day Friday, and by seven o'clock that night, we were docked in Liverpool harbor and got ashore. We got acquainted with a man and his wife who were going to a small town in Aberdeenshire and the fellow from Aberdeen and another from Dundee, who all crossed on the ship with us, so that made a party of six of us going north. The first thing we did was to go to a barber's shop and get a week's growth of beard off our faces and that was my only experience with English shaving, and oh what a shave it was. The razor felt like a saw, and I felt like squirming around in the chair, I never had any idea that a barber could cause a fellow so much misery. The other boys had the same experience and what we had to say about that particular barber wouldn't look well in print, we were fairly well cleaned up however and looked a little more presentable. We left Liverpool that night, and the conductor of the train put us into a fine car by ourselves, it was a private compartment with lavatory attachment, which was a luxury none of us had ever been accustomed to in the old country nor in the new for that matter. It being night we saw nothing of the countryside till we got near to Edinburgh. We changed to another train there and were put into a third class coach, where we rode till we reached Aberdeen. Our Dundee friend left us at Dundee, and we were now only about 70 miles from Aberdeen. We whiled away the time singing and relating our experiences in America, none of us felt like sleeping, being too excited at the prospect of again once more meeting our respective families and old friends, and seeing again the old familiar scenes of childhood and young manhood. It was a typpical December morning, cold and raw. When daylight came we began to see people moving about and were particularly interested in the children that we saw around the country railway stations,, most of them the very picture of roust health, with their rosy cheeks, made rosier by the sharp frost in the air. After we left Dundee behind we came to scenery which was familiar to me, as I had traveled over that country before, both by train and high bicycle. When we finally reached the railway bridge across the river, we got our first glimpse of our Granite City, Silver City by the sea, Bonacord, Aberdeen, the first two are complimentary titles, and the third is the city's motto, and is displayed on its coat of arms. We were then only about two miles from the station, so it wasn't long after that when we stepped out of the train and saw some familiar faces at once. The first fellow that I spoke to was one that I went to school with 20 years before, his father had a hotel on Union St. and the son met the trains to meet the commercial travellers. My brother was at that time chief electrical engineer at the Palace Hotel and the North of Scotland Rly. Co. Joint Station. The Rly. Co. owned the hotel, they had come into ownership of it some time after I went to America. It was and is yet I suppose the finest hotel in the city. There was a covered subway which was used by the guests to go to and from the station, so Jim Beaton and I went by this subway to see my brother at the hotel. The dynamos were in the basement of the building, but when we got there his assistant, Hugh Rose told us my brother had been up nearly all night supervising some repairs and was now home asleep. Jim and I then parted each to go and look up our people. I went to Gerrard St. where my brother was then living, and when I arrived there my sister in law met me at the door and told me that they had been expecting me but didn't know when I would arrive in Aberdeen. She took me into the room where my brother was sleeping, and when I awoke him, he stared at me in surprise as if he thought he was dreaming, but not for long, he jumped out of bed and had his clothes on in a jiffy. He was pleased to see me and I to see him. He wanted to know why I had come to him instead of going home to mother and father, and I told him that I came to get him to go home with me as I was afraid that my mother would break down and cry, and I thought it would be a help in a situation of that kind, if he were along. I wanted my home coming to be as common place as possible because I shrank from any display of emotion, and I guess I was afraid that my own emotions might not be under perfect control. My sister in law prepared a good dinner for us and after we finished my brother and I went to the station to get my trunk and tool chest, so when we got them and ourselves into a cab we started for Huntly St. where my people were living. We were home in about five minutes, and when my mother came to the door overjoyed when she saw me and of course just as I had feared broke into tears. When I got into the house I found my father in bed where he had been confined for a week or two with an attack of his old trouble bronchitis, his health was improving though, and I could see that he too was glad, but like all Scotsmen he could make little outward demonstration of his feelings. Two of my sisters were still at home with the old folk, Jean was twenty four years old and Fanny was nineteen, Isa the one next to me had married since I left home and had three children. Times had been hard in America in the early ninties, and wages were low, so that I didn't have very much money when I got home, but by careful management I had to make what I had do, and I had a very good time visiting around among friends of an evenings sometimes. My old chum Bill Dobson was in Dundee, and he was expected home on a visit at the New Year holidays, to see his mother. I enjoyed his company while he was in Aberdeen, and we had a reunion of all the boys that we chummed with in the old days, but most of the old glamor was gone from our association together, at least that is how I felt. Some of them were married and had restrictions on them which they were untrammeled with in their bachelorhood, so most of my time during my whole stay was spent in the company of Jim Beaton. I felt lost without him when he went away for a week to spend a week with his father who was a farmer at Fyvie in Aberdeenshire. On the 31st of December, New Year's Eave or Hagmanay as it is called, my sister Jean was married go George Ingram. The marriage was at the house and we had a party of friends with us and spent a verry jolly night till 12 o'clock, when Jim Beaton and I started out first footing. My father enjoyed the company that night as he was feeling as well as his increased feeble condition would permit. He had been working again since I had been back home, and I have always believed that my arrival in the family circle, revived him so that he was able to go to work, two days after that. Our first visit that New Year's morning was to my brother Willie who had left the wedding party shortly before midnight so as to be home before anyone got there. We had a bottle of New Year's cheer and some cake and cheese too as was customary for the occasion. We sang a few songs and had a very pleasant visit, the kids were all up and enjoyed the fun, then we started out from there to visit an old friend who was in Vinalhaven with us. This was Bill Donald, a tall fellow with a face that would have taken a prize for homeliness, but as honest as could be. Mrs Donald was a plain looking body too but she had a very kind heart, we knew her too in Vinalhaven, and had been frequent guests at their house there. They had gone home to Scotland nearly a year and a half before we did. Mrs Donald came out to America to marry Bill about five years previous to the time I am now writing about, and they got along very happily together, but just previous to the time that they left Vinalhaven for home she got news that her mother had cancer and couldn't get well, and after that she was the most home sick woman I had ever seen and I had seen a few with that affliction. Bill was very reluctant to go home with her but he finally consented to go. I remember a few of us took a half day off to see them off on the Governor Bodwell when they left the island. Her mother died some time after she got back and then she began to long to return to America. All she wanted to talk about was the good times we used to have there. I felt the same way about it, but I had a greater hope of going back than she did, and intended doing so in the spring. They couldn't get the money ahead for the trip and she felt terribly sad over it. They had a little daughter a little more than a year old. Bill I was told after I came back to this country drank a great deal, and I understand Mrs. Donald lived a very unhappy life. He came back to this country about ten years later, but without his family. Some time after he came back he wrote me asking if I could get a job for him, as he thought he would like to come south. There was no job for him and I wasn't sorry, because I didn't like the way he had done, and didn't want to be bothered with him. It wasn't many years after that when my mother told me had returned home a total physical wreck, afflicted with pernicious anemia. He walked into his the house unexpectedly, dropped down on a couch and exclaimed, thank God I am home. He had several children by this time and they had a hard time of it while he lay helpless, he didn't live long however, poor chap his was a wasted life, and a miserable one. By the way he was one of the boys belonging to Alan Talbot's bible class too that I knew in after life. Bill had a boy drowned in the Mersey River in England with many others of the British navy who were flying in a lighter than air ship, known as a Dirrigible, that happened some time after the World war. Well we spent the night at Donald's house that New Year's day, and went home to my house for breakfast in the morning, and after that we met Bill Dobson and some others of my old clan and started out to make a New Year's call on one of the old members of our clan, Jack Duncan, who is now in Australia. He went there with his family after his daughter married an Australian soldier during the World war. We had a very enjoyable day that New Year's day, and it was in the wee sma' hours of the morning after before I got to my bed. I wound up the day by going to the Masonic ball which was held that night. I had a dandy time there and went up to a good many dances, and I was called on to sing a song for them during the intermission. I sung a song that was highly popular in the U.S. and was new to most of the people who were at that ball. It was a sentimental song of a somewhat pathetic nature and set to a tune that became very popular for waltzing. The story of the song was about a wayward girl away from home and dying, the lines of the chorus were as follows. Just tell them that you saw me, She said they'll know the rest, Just tell them that I'm looking well you know, Just whisper if you get a chance To mother dear and say, I love her as I did long long ago. It took down the house, and I had to sing an encore or two, one of them was "Tim Finnigan's wake", a song that the boys and girls at school used to have me sing in the play ground sometimes at recess, and I have sung it many times since at many gatherings of one kind or another, It is a rollicking Irish song, the first verse of which goes like this. Tim Finnigan lived in Sackville Street, An oirish gintleman moighty odd, He had a beautiful brogue so rich and swate, And to rise in the Wurrld he carried a hod, But you see he had a sort uv a tipplin way, For the love uv the liquor poor Tim was born, And to help him on his work each day, He had a drap uv the craythur ivry morn. The song goes on to describe his undoing which came about one day in the morning, when he was so full, he fell from the ladder and broke his skull, and they carried him home himsilf to wake, all tied up in a nice clean sheet. His neighbors assembled at the wake and the fun began, with pipes, tobacco and whiskey punch, it grew fast and furious, when Biddy O'Brien began to cry, such a purty corpse she never did see, whereat Paddy Mcgee promptly tould her to hould her gab. A row and a ruction soon began, and 'twas woman to woman and man to man cudgelling each other with shillalags, Irish for and oak cudgel, then all at once Mickey Maloney who had been knocked down in the melee raised his head, when a bottle of whiskey flew at him, however it missed him and the liquor scattered over Tim, who instantly revived and rising from his bier cried, whirl your liquor round like blazes, Arrah be me sowl did you thjink I was dead. I always accompanied the chorus with a step of a clog hornpipe which kept excellent time with the tune. The following lines is the chorus with a step of a hornpipe which kept excellent time with the tune. The following lines is the chorus. Whack, Arrah and take your partners. Wilt on the flure your trotters shake, Isn't it the truth I tell yez, Lots o' fun at Finnigan's wake. It is a very old song and I never knew any one who knew it except my brother, he used to sing it when I was a small boy, and I learned the words and tune just from hearing him sing it. I think it was about three in the morning when I finally reached home and my bed, pretty well tired out, not having slept any the night before. Just after the New Year holidays I became troubled with an infected toe, caused from a blister which had developed from walking about so much, and it bothered me considerably for several weeks, so that I could not wear a shoe on my foot, and had to wear a rubber overshoe instead. On Saturday evenings Jim Beaton and I used to often go to the Municipal Concerts, which were held in the Trades Hall on Belmont St. and enjoyed them very much. They have different entertainers at each concert, and they were the best amatuer performers selected from all over Scotland. It was high class and low priced entertainment, only four cents admission was the price, and they had crowded houses every Saturday night throughout the winter season. That was swomething new in the way of public entertainment, started since I left Scotland six years before, and was a great boon to the working class. I went to the Burns Birthday Anniversary concert with Jim, and we took a couple of girls of our acquaintance with us and had a grand time at that. I had attended several of those concerts before I left home, and that was the last one I was ever at in Scotland. They are held every year on or about January 25th and were attended by large drowds to hear the old Scottish songs sung by the very best singers that Scotland can produce, some of them being local singers. The large choir were all Aberdeen people and were led by Mr. Litster who taught singing in the public schools of Aberdeen when I was at school, and he was still employed in that capacity and was for quite a number of years after that. The night of that particular concert is a memorable one to me, on account of it being such a night of wind and snow. It was one of the worst snow storms that I had ever seen out in either in Scotland or America. It started to snow just after Beaton and I had taken the girls home, and we had about a mile to walk to our homes he going one way and I in the opposite direction. It was about midnight and the streets were almost deserted, in fact I don't remember now if I saw anyone, at least after I left the down town section of the city. There were times that I could not make any headway at all hardly, and it must have taken me more than half an hour to get home, but I finally got there. Well it had snowed all night and when my father started out to go to his work he was unable to get to the foot of the street on which we lived and had to come back home. By the time that I had breakfast it had stopped snowing and the wind had gone down, and when I went out about ten o'clock in the forenoon the snow had got tramped down enough so that the pedestrians could make some progress walking through it. The stillness of that morning was remarkable and sounds could be heard that was never heard when the roar of traffic was at its height in the day time. Street car traffic was at a stand still and the Company had large sleds hauling the passengers and there was no noise from the wheels of the carts and lorries and horses hoofs on the paving blocks, and the voices of people talking could be heard as one walked along the streets and the noise of shovels on the hard pavement as men cleared the snow. The snow had drifted in places ten to fifteen feet high, and I remember as I passed the Music Hall on Union Street seeing where it had drifted in on the wide porch the roof of which was supported by large granite columns, so that the big doors were almost hidden from sight. The Street Cleaning Department was a very efficient one and it wasn't long till they had the snow nearly all carted away from the business section. The weather was very cold for several weeks after that, and I was beginning to find time hanging a little heavily on my hands, and would have gladly gone to work if I had been able to get a job. Shrove Tuesday happens in February, and has to do with the Roman Catholic church. The proper designation I presume would be Shrovetide, but some times called Shrove Tuesday, and it is a time of preparation for confession and comes immediately before Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of Lent, so Tuesday being the last day of Shrovetide, we used to have a feast in Scotland on that day, of beef brose at noon and bannocks in the evening. Brose was made with fine oat meal and the pot liquor from the beef poured on the meal and stirred. This was eaten with a spoon the same as oat meal porridge is eaten. I think brose is unknown except among the Scots. I believe the name of the dish is derived from ambrosia the mythical dish of the gods, which made immortal those who ate of it or drank of it I should say, because it was a beverage of delectable taste. The fun came in the evening when the bannocks were made from a batter consisting of flour or barley meal mixed with the liquor from the beef, and I think some milk. My mother would sit and bake them on the griddle for at least two hours while we children and generally some of the neighborhood children with us ate them as they came hot off the griddle. The last of the batter was used to make a large bannock the size of the griddle, and in that it was the custom to deposit in it a coin, a ring and a button. The bannock when baked was then cut up into pieces, and each one of the party got a piece. The superstition was that the one finding the coin would some time be rich and the one getting the ring was destined to be married and the poor luckless individual biting his or her tooth into the button was doomed to be an old maid or bachelor as the case might be. What fun and gales of laughter ensued at the expense of the unfortunate one we used to indulge in. Jim Beaton and I were very much delighted to get an invitation to a bannock night party at a house in the west end of the city where the well to do and the rich lived. The party was to be of four people, two young girls who were sisters, Watson was their name, Jim and myself. I don't believe I ever enjoyed anything in my life better than I did from the time I entered the house until about ten o'clock. The girls were old friends of Beaton's, but I had never met them before, but it was not long until I felt perfectly at home and at my ease with them. They were very nice girls, full of life and fun, and little did any of us think that stark tradgedy was lurking in the back ground of all our jollity. About ten o'clock when the fun was at its height and we were laughing heartily at some joke or other, the youngest sister suddenly pressed her hand to her side and cried out in pain her face meanwhile got as pale as a sheet. We were all in terror and didn't know what to do to relieve her pain. The other sister was a servant at this house, and they were all away from home, so we young people were all by ourselves, however we called a doctor and he ordered a cab and had her removed to her home, and next morning when I went down town to meet Jim beaton he told me that the girl was dead. She had an ulcer in her stomach the doctor said and it had eaten into a blood vessel. Jim and I both got a terrible shock, and it was some time before I could get thoughts of it out of my mind. About the middle of February I got a job at my trade with Smith and Taylor who had a monumental yard, employing quite a number of men. My father worked there grinding tools for the cutters and was instrumental in getting me the job. I did not intend to stay there long as my mind was made up all the time that I was going back to America. After being accustomed to the American system of work, I didn't like getting up at six thirty in the morning in order to be at my work by six o'clock without breakfast. We got home again at eight to breakfast which was a change from the custom obtaining before I left home. From nine to ten was the breakfast hour then. Looking back at that now in the light of my experience in this country it was a rather ridiculous custom. One break in the day is enough, although five hours in the forenoon did seem long at times for a hard working person to do without food, but after we got the eight hour a day system it was not so bad, as in most places the day was divided into two equal parts, beginning at eight A.M. and ending at five P.M., it was optional with the workers however as to how the day was divided, so in some places they started work at seven A.M. and quit at 4 P.M. which made a longer evening for recreation. My people would all have liked it if I hade decided to stay at home instead of going back to America, and of course that made me feel a little sorry that I could not be contented to comply with their wishes, but nothing would satisfy me nor induce me to stay. Within a few days of the end of March I picked up my tools at Smith and Taylor's and left to get ready for my trip back. I had a great deal to do and quite a number of friends to see before leaving, so I was quite busy and had little time to think that I was breaking loose from my people probably for the last time, and maybe would never see them again. That all came to me when I said good bye to my father and mother, at the door of our house. I made a trip to Turriff in the north of Aberdeenshire to see my grandmother and aunt Jean and Uncle Willie Hacket who were on a farm a few miles out of Turriff. I also had a cousin, Mary Paterson who married a fellow named James Wright, where I stayed over Saturday night. I had a very pleasant visit with them, and Jimmy drove me out to my Uncle's farm where we spent a rather pleasant day. My grandmother was growing very old, eighty four she was then. She died two years later. I wanted to get another dish of brose made with good rich milk and cream, as I had been very fond of that dish when I was a boy, so I got Uncle Willie Hacket to mix up a bowl of it for me. That is the last time that I have been treated to a dish of brose. My uncle left the farm and moved to Macduff another town in the north of Aberdeenshire and again engaged in the soft drink manufacturing business. He made money always at that business, and retired, living a life of ease in that northern town for a number of years. He died not very many years ago somewhere between the age of eighty and ninety. We drove back to Turriff that same night, and the next day my brother came up to spend the day with us. He and Jimmy Wright went to the inn and spent a few hours with the land lord, who was a friend of Jimmy's. Willie played the piano and sang for us, and I sang a few songs, so we had a very enjoyable day sampling the land lord's prime ale. We got back home to Aberdeen that evening and spent it at my father's and mother's house. That was to be my last night in Scotland, as I was to leave Aberdeen on the train next day at 5 P.M.. When the time arrived to say good bye to the old folks, it was a rather sad leave taking. I felt sure my father thought he would never see me again, and that made me feel miserable, as he found it impossible to control his emotion. My mother of course was as sorry to see me leave as he was, but one expects a woman to show her feelings. It is hard to see an old man break down under strong emotion. I suppose he knew he could not live very much longer, and it was just a little over ten months after that when he died, a victim of a long standing case of chronic bronchitis. I felt so bad on my way to the railway station, that I said to Jim Beaton and my sister Fanny, I would give anything to call it all off and go back home, but it was too late then, and of course I soon got over that feeling. I was making the trip alone this time which made it a little harder for me. Quite a crowd of relatives and friends were at the station to see me off, and I felt sorry to leave them all. I got into Liverpool about 3 P.M. the next morning and had a rather wearisome time until I could get on board the ship Germanic of the White star Line. I wonder if she is still afloat. She was a good ship and some improvement over the ship I was on the first trip across. When I was assigned to a berth I met a young English fellow and liking his appearance I asked him if he would like to occupy the bunk next to me. He was pleased to accept my invitation, and we were constant companions all the way over. I have forgotten his name but he had been a student in some college in England, and was expelled for some reason or other, I have forgotten what. He was coming to this country to finish his education, and I have often wondered what became of him. When I left him in New York at the end of the voyage he was bound west and I headed back to Maine. I have forgotten also what he said he was expelled from college for, but it was for nothing disgraceful. It is strange but true that I remember less about that trip than I do about the first one, and no doubt that is due to the fact that being the first time I had crossed the Atlantic, every thing happening made a deeper impression. I enjoyed this chap's company very much however and he being better educated than I was he was more interesting to me than somebody with less of it would have been. I had one letter from him after he arrived at his distination and I answered that, so it was just another case of ships that pass in the night, and speak to each other in passing, perhaps never again to meet.

When we reached New York I did not have to go through the formalities that the immigrant has to do and as I had to do on my first entrance to America, because this time I was a citizen of this country and had my papers in my pocket to prove the fact. I got off the ship at once, and was on the streets of New York and familiar territory. I at once made directly to see an old playmate who used to live in the same tenement with us in Gordon St.. His mother asked me to call and see him on my way through New York. He was working in a large seed shop, and I found the place in one of the down town streets. Jim Duguid was his name, so I enquired at one of the clerks if Mr. Duguid was in the store. He called his mname and some one answered, but when I looked in the direction from where the sound of his voice came I couldn't see any body bearing any resemblance to the fellow I knew, and said so to the clerk who called him again, and that time he came over where we were, but I could see no resemblance to the boy who was my old neighbor and play mate. He had grown much larger and quite stout since I saw him last, which was about ten years previously. He was a little younger than me and when he left Scotland he was only about eighteen years old. He knew me however and called me my by my name and I had to admit that he must be one and the same with the Jim Duguid of my boyhood days. He got leave off from his boss to go out with me for a part of the day, so I spent a very pleasant time with him recalling old times, and relating to each other some of the things that had happened to us and our respective families during the years intervening since last we had seen each other. Jim narrowly escaped drowning once when he and I were trying to wade across the river Dee away back when we were some where about ten years old. It was on a Saturday forenoon, that he and I rambled away up the river and crossed over the Bridge of Dee, and it was when we were strolling down the bank of the river on the Kincardineshire side that a notion took us to wade across. It didn't look deep to us, and it was just one of those things that thoughtless boys will some times do, which brings disaster to them and grief to all belonging to them. Just when we were about half across carrying our trousers under our arms, Jim must have stepped in a hole, it was either that or the current took him off his feet, any way he lost his balance and was about to be washed down the river and if I hadn't been close enough to him he would certainly have been drowned. I caught hold of him and got him back steady on his feet, but we both got pretty wet and when we got back to the bank again we took all of or clothes off and spread them out on the grass to dry while we ran about on the river bank to keep warm, as it was rather a cool day. Finally we put our clothes back on not nearly dry, and wore them all day until time to go to bed. Being Saturday night we got our baths and then were found out. Mrs Duguid came up to see my mother as soon as she discovered that Jim's clothes were damp. He had made confession of the whole business, so that got me in bad too. There was plenty to be said on the part of our mothers, and they said it. That is the last time that I ever tried to wade across a river. Another kind of tragedy was in store for Jim Duguid which was to happen about seven months after this time that I saw him in New York. It happened on the night of the city election after the evening celebration was all over. Jim's wife was away from home, so when he went home he went to bed smoking a cigar and dropped off to sleep, so the result was that he set fire to the bed and was dead before the firemen arrived to put the fire out. I left New York that evening about six o'clock, on one of the Fall River Steam boats. That river ship was the most elegant and luxurious thing I had ever seen. I was on the Saloon deck I suppose it was called, I strolled in there by some chance and as no one took any notice I stayed there and listened to the music played by a high class orchestra. I was enjoying myself immensely sitting on the soft cushioned chairs and couches, when an official came around to look at the tickets. When he saw mine he told me quite politely where my quarters were, so I thanked him and retired to what is called the steerage, and thus I fell from my high estate, but I got into my bunk and slept some until the boat arrived at its destination, then I got on the train for Boston.