One of a family of ten, I was born at Wanlockhead, Dumfriesshire, in the year 1861. My boyhood was spent in the midst of comparative poverty, under whose grim shadow so many toilers live and die. Of my parents I say nothing here, except that my love and reverence for their memory remain undimmed to this day. The amount of love and self-sacrifice involved in bringing up a large family on the earnings of the lead miner at that period--from fifteen to seventeen shillings per week--I leave to the imagination of my readers. In spite of poor environment, my boyhood was, on the whole, happy and care-free. My greatest delight was to roam the glens and hills of my nativity. My pet aversion was the school, and to be confined within its four walls when the sun was shining and the birds singing outside was to me the refinement of cruelty. My parents and teachers must have been at their wits' end with me, for, in spite of heavy punishment, I played truant whenever opportunity offered. I was employed as a lead washer at the age of thirteen, for the magnificent wage of fivepence per day. This was increased at the rate of one penny or twopence yearly, at the discretion of the manager. After working five years at lead washing it came my turn to go underground as a labourer and miner's assistant, where in course of time I became a fully qualified lead miner. I will not weary my readers with an account of my ups and downs in life or of my many startling experiences in the lead and coal mines. I was a coal miner in different parts of Scotland for six years. I did not take kindly to the work, and when I left it I fervently hoped it was for good. Of the coal miners I have a high opinion. Beneath the rough exterior of the most of them they are true to the core; brave hearted men, who have proved their sterling worth on many a shell-torn, blood-stained field, and in many an appalling mine disaster; ready to fight, suffer, or die on the field of battle for their ideals: ready in the mine disaster to go to almost certain death to rescue their comrades. Can human nature rise higher than this? My hobby has been the study of music and the playing of different instruments. I have gained an elementary knowledge of composition, harmony, and counterpoint, and in the playing of different instruments made myself fairly expert. My favourite is the violin, and my earnings with it at concerts, balls, kirns, and merry-makings generally enabled my wife to keep the pot boiling and the bairns fed and clad when the lead miner's wage was utterly inadequate for that purpose.