The Personal Life Of David Livingstone

1813-

to Neil and Agnes Livingstone in Hamilton Cemetery--David Livingstone, born 19th March, 1813--Boyhood--At home--In school--David goes into Blantyre Mill--First Earnings--Night-school--His habits of reading--Natural-history expeditions--Gre

e missed being famous only from being eclipsed by the greater glory of Staffa. The island belonged for many generations to the Macquaires, a name distinguished in our home annals, as well as in those of Australia. The Celtic name of the Livingstones was M'Leay, which, according to Dr. Livingstone's own idea, means "son of the gray-headed," but according t

original spelling [1]. The significance of the original form of the name was not without its influence on him. He used to refer with great pleasure to a note from an old friend and fellow-student, the late Professor George Wilson, of Edinburgh, ackno

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the family being guilty of dishonesty, and who charged his children never to introduce the vice. He used also to tell his children, when spurring them to diligence at school, that neither had he ever heard of a Livingstone who was a donkey. He has also recorded a tradition that the people of the island were converted from being Roman Catholics "by the laird coming

k, of Ulva) says that he had frequently listened with delight to the tales of pastoral life led by the people on these occasions; it was indeed a relic of Arcadia. There were tragic traditions, too, of Ulva; notably that of Kirsty's Rock, an awful place where the islanders are said to have administered Lynch law to a woman who had unwittingly killed a girl she meant only to frighten, for the alleged crime--denied by the girl--of stealing a cheese. The poor woman was broken-hearted when she saw what she had done; but the neighbors, filled with horror, and deaf to her remonstrances, placed her in

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of the unnamed ancestor must have sunk into the heart of his descendant, for, being a God-fearing man and of sterling honesty, he was employed in the conveyance of large sums of money from Glasgow to the works, and in his old age was pensioned off, so as to spend his declining years in ease and comfort. There is a tradition in the family, showing his sense o

ike some other missionaries, he sought to conserve, while purifying it by Christian influence. It showed itself in the dash and daring which were so remarkbly combined in him with Saxon forethought and perseverance. We are not sure but it gave a tinge to his affections, intensifying his likes, and some of his disli

ed soon after in the Mediterranean. Only one son remained at home, Neil, the father of David, who eventually became a tea-dealer, and spent his life at Blantyre and Hamilton. David Livingstone has told us that his father was of the high type of character portrayed in the Cottar's Saturday Night. There are friends still alive who remember him well, an

lowship, before such things had ceased to be regarded as badges of fanaticism. While traveling through the neighboring parishes in his vocation of tea-merchant, he acted also as colporteur, distributing tracts and encouraging the reading of useful books. He took suitable opportunities when they came to him of speaking to young men and others on the most important of all subjects, and not without effect. He learned Gaelic that he might be able to read the Bible to his mother, who knew that language best. He had indeed the very soul of a missionary. Withal he was kindly and affabl

avid Hunter used to say he had no feeling of cold that day. He married Janet Moffat, and lived at first in comfortable circumstances at Airdrie, where he owned a cottage and a croft. Mrs. Hunter died, when her daughter Agnes, afterward Mrs. Neil Livingstone, was but fifteen. Agnes was her mother's only nurse during a long illness, and attended so carefully to her wants that the minister of the family laid his hand on her head, and said, "A blessing will follow you, my lassie, for your duty to your mother." Soon after Mrs. Hunter's death a reverse of fortune overtook her husband, who had been

to the great sorrow of the parents. Mrs. Livingstone's family spoke and speak of her as a very loving mother, one who contributed to their home a remarkable element of brightness and serenity. Active, orderly, and of thorough cleanliness, she trained her family in the same virtues, exemplifying their value in their own home. She was a delicate little woman, with a wonderful flow of good spirits, and remarkable for the

cy to a very old age. In one of Livingstone's private journals, written in 1864, during his second visit home, he gives at full length one of his mother'

e thought of David's feigning madness before the Philistines, and beslabbered his beard with saliva. All who were found guilty were sent to the army in America, or the plantations. A sergeant had compassion on him, and said, 'Tell me, gudeman, if you are really out of your mind. I'll befriend you.' He confessed that he only feigned insanity, because he had a wife and three bairns at home who would starve if he were sent to the army. 'Dinna say onything mair to ony body,' sai

nfined her to bed for several years. A telegram received by him at Oxford announced her death; that telegram had been stowed away in on

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ed bravely and steadily all the burdens of life; a love of books that showed the presence of a cultivated taste, with a fear of God that dignified the life which it moulded and controlled. To the last David Livingstone was proud of the class from which he sprang. When the highest in the land were showering compliments on him, he was writing to his old friends of "my own order, the honest poor," and trying, by schemes of

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the fireside and tell them all that had occurred during the week, thus sharing his life with them. His sisters still remember how they longed for these Saturday evenings. At the village school he received his early education. He seems from his earliest childhood to have been of a calm, self-reliant nature. It was his father's habit to lock the door at dusk, by which time all the children were expected to be in the house. One evening David had infringed this rule, and when he reached the d

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cher for repeating the 119th Psalm on two successive evenings with o

earned was laid by him in her lap. Livingstone has told us that with a part of his first week's wages he purchased Ruddiman's Rudiments of Latin, and pursued the study of that language with unabated ardor for many years afterward at an evening class which had been opened between the hours of eight and ten. "The dictionary part of my labors was followed up till twel

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g-jenny, so that he could catch sentence after sentence as he passed at his work. The labor of attending to the wheels was great, for the improvements in spinning

e, that he could lay his hands on, he eagerly read. Some publications of the Tract Society, called the Weekly Visitor, the Child's Companion and Teacher's Offering, were taken in, and were much enjoyed by his son David, especially the papers of "Old Humphrey." Novels were not admitted into the house, in accordance with the feeling prevalent in religious circles. Neil

ulated that on these occasions he did not always confine his researches in zoology to fossil animals. That Livingstone was a poacher in the grosser sense of the term seems hardly credible, though with the Radical opinions which he held at the time it may readily be believed that he had no respect for the sanctity of game. If a salmon came in his way while he was fishing for trout, he

of the provisions of that atonement to my own case [5]." Some light is thrown on this brief account in a paper submitted by him to the Directors of the London Missionary Society in 1838, in answer to a schedule of queries sent down by them when he offered himself as a missionary for their service. He says that about his twelfth year he began to reflect on his state as a sinner, and became anxious to realize the state of mind that flows from the reception of the truth into the heart. He was deterred, however, from embra

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ivilege immediately to accept salvation by Christ. Humbly believing that through sovereign mercy and grace I have been enabled so to do, and having felt in some measu

sense of deep obligation to Him for his mercy, that had influenced, in some small measure, his conduct ever since, is from him most significant. Accustomed to suppress all spiritual emotion in his public writings, he would not have used these words if they had not been very real. They give us the secret of his life. Acts of self-denial that are very hard to do under the iron law of conscience, become a willing service under the glow of divine love. It was the glow of divine love as well as th

ond what was required for his subsistence [6]." The resolution to give himself came from his reading an Appeal by Mr. Gutzlaff to the Churches of Britain and America on behalf of China. It was "the claims of so many millions of his fellow-creature

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Scotland or in Africa. As we have already seen, he was essentially a man of the people. Not that he looked unkindly on the richer classes,--he used to say in his later years, that he liked to see people in comfort and at leisure, enjoying the good things of life,--but he felt that the burden-bearing multitude claimed his sympathy most. How quick the people are, whether in England or in Africa, to find out this sympathetic spirit, and how powerful is the hold

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y Blantyre discipline, which had forced him to bear irksome toil with p

Christian evangelist, who, in season, and out of season, never ceased to beseech the people of Blantyre to yield themselves to God. Early on Sunday mornings he would go through the village ringing a bell to rouse the people that they might attend an early prayer-meeting which he had established. His temperament was far too high for most even of the well-disposed people of Blantyre, but Neil Livingstone appreciated his genuine worth, and so did his son. David says of him that "for about forty years he had been incessant and never weary in good works, and that such men were an honor to their country and their profession." Yet it was not after the model of Thomas Burke that Livingstone's own religious life was fashioned. It had a greater resemblance to that of David Hogg, the other of the two Blantyre patriarchs of whom he make