Well did I know that the sympathy and prayers of my dear parents were warmly with me in all my studies and in all my Mission work; but for my education they could, of course, give me no money help. All through, on the contrary, it was my pride and joy to help them, being the eldest in a family of eleven. First, I assisted them to purchase the family cow, without whose invaluable aid my ever-memorable mother never could have reared and fed her numerous flock; then, I paid for them the house-rent and the cow’s grass on the Bank Hill, till some of the others grew up and relieved me by paying these in my stead; and finally, I helped to pay the school-fees, to provide clothing—in short I gave, and gladly, what could possibly be saved out of my City Mission salary of £40, ultimately advanced to £45 per annum. Self-educated thus, and without the help of one shilling from any other source, readers will easily imagine that I had many a staggering difficulty to overcome in my long curriculum in Arts, Divinity, and Medicine; but God so guided me, and blessed all my little arrangements, that I never incurred one farthing of personal debt. There was, however, a heavy burden always pressing upon me, and crushing my spirit from the day I left my home, which had been thus incurred. The late owner of the Dalswinton estate allowed, as a prize, the cottager who had the tidiest house and most beautiful flower-garden to sit rent free. For several years in succession, my old sea-faring grandfather won this prize, partly by his own handy skill, partly by his wife’s joy in flowers. Unfortunately no clearance-receipt had been asked or given for these rents—the proprietor and his cottars treating each other as friends rather than as men of business. The new heir, unexpectedly succeeding, found himself in need of money, and threatened prosecution for such rents as arrears. The money had to be borrowed. A money-lending lawyer gave it at usurious interest, on condition of my father also becoming responsible for interest and principal. This burden hung like a millstone around my grandfather’s neck till the day of his death; and it then became suspended round my father’s neck alone. The lawyer, on hearing of my giving up trade and entering upon study, threatened to prosecute my father for the capital, unless my name were given along with his for security. Every shilling that I or any of us could save, all through these ten years of my preparatory classes, went to pay off that interest and gradually to reduce the capital; and this burden we managed, amongst us, to extinguish just on the eve of my departure for the South Seas. Indeed, one of the purest joys connected with that time was that I received my first Foreign Mission salary and outfit money in advance, and could send home a sum sufficient to wipe out the last penny of a claim by that money-lender or by any one else against my beloved parents, in connection with the noble struggle they