The future economist had not, in infancy, the advantage of such strong health as enables children to frisk, and riot, and tumble about without danger. It required all the care and attention which a widowed and disconsolate mother generally bestows upon an only son, to sustain his weakly and delicate constitution against the perils which beset beings in that immature season of earthly existence; and she executed her task with so much real tenderness and solicitude, as to have been charged with the venial fault of too readily gratifying his whims and humors. Unbounded indulgence toward a child is certainly highly imprudent; but it does not appear that it either spoiled Smith, or produced in his case any other evil consequences. Another, and a more substantial kind of danger, he is related to have been on one occasion exposed to. The tribes of gipsies, who then infested the country, carried on a most indiscriminate system of plunder. Nothing came amiss to them that was not too hot or too heavy; and they not only anticipated the doctrine of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest markets, but acted on it to an extent which would make teachers of economy “stare and gasp” with surprise and horror. They seem to have loved the trade of pillage, “not wisely, but too well;” for, though it is not difficult to understand their motive in appropriating the pigs, poultry, and game of the district, periodically favored with their portentous presence, it is certainly not so easy to imagine what advantage they found in carrying off, and burdening themselves with, their neighbors’ children. But, whatever their views in this predatory system, the little boy destined to become the author of the “Wealth of Nations,” narrowly escaped their clutches. When he was three years old, his fond mother carried him on a visit to the family of her brother, who resided at Strathenry; and one day, while there, he was playing noiselessly about the door of the house, when up came a gang of gipsies. The sight of a child, thus alone and helpless, was a temptation not to be resisted; and the scene may readily be fancied. Some tall prophetess, whom Sir Roger de Coverley would have called “a baggage,” dressed in a long, faded, red cloak, would separate herself from the troop, and, after turning and carefully glancing round on all sides to ascertain that she was safe from the eyes of fair-haired Christians, insure the fatal silence of her tiny victim, by placing in his hand a rosy-cheeked apple. Then, stealthily lifting him up, she would with cunning caresses deposit his slight form beneath her cloak, and hastily rejoin her comrades. And now there was every probability of Smith being brought up to a life of theft and vagrancy, passing his nights in plundering hen-roosts and breaking game preserves, or seated by some watch-fire blazing within a circle of stones, and uttering “uncouth gibberish” to damsels, whose