JAMES YOUNG SIMPSON, the seventh son and eighth child of a small baker, was born at Bathgate, Linlithgowshire, on the 7th of June 1811. His birth took place when his father’s circumstances were at the lowest ebb. Several of the family, including his mother, had but just recovered from fever. The mother had to rise from her maternal pain to take an active part in business, which she did most energetically and successfully. Her religious character and her thrifty habits deeply impressed the little boy, and he pleasingly recalled in after years her injunction, when she had just darned a big hole in his stocking, “My Jamie, when your mother’s away, you will mind that she was a grand darner.” She died when James was but nine years old, leaving him in the care of his only sister Mary, eleven years older, who proved a tender foster mother. Already as a child James Simpson became known as “the wise wean,” “the young philosopher,” and his voice was sweet and silvery. His industry and retentiveness of memory early gave promise of distinction, which all the family were persuaded would fall to his lot. And he would readily, book in hand, keep the shop for a time, or run with rolls to the laird’s house. “I remember,” says his brother Alexander,[5] “finding him sitting in the street on a very dusty day, sobbing bitterly, the tears running down his cheeks covered with dust. ‘What ails you, Jamie?’ I said, and he answered, sobbing as if his heart would break, ‘I’ve broken the pony’s knees.’” It turned out that Alexander himself had overridden the pony, so that it could not help stumbling. The father of the family trusted his children in a peculiar way. All were regarded as equally concerned in the family prosperity, and the shop till was unfastened, and free to all; each habitually thought of the general good first. In this way the household prospered ever after James’s birth, and he personally received unremitting attention.