One of the most tender pictures in the history of English literature is that of Carlyle as he starts for his University career. Just a boy, a child not yet fourteen! It is early morning in November at Ecclefechan--and Edinburgh with its famous University is a hundred miles away. The father and mother have risen early to get Thomas ready--not for the cab to take him to the "purple luxury and plush repose" of the Pullman on the Limited Express. No, Tom is going to walk,--his only companion a boy two or three years older. These rugged, poor, and godly parents had long discussed the sending of Tommy to the great University. James Bell, one of the wise men of the community, had said: "Educate a boy, and he grows up to despise his ignorant parents," but they knew that depended on the boy. "Thou hast not done so; God be thanked," said James Carlyle to his son in after years. But let us come back to our picture. In our mind's eye we see the Scotch lad starting out on his hundred-mile trip in the mist of a foggy November morning. Almost three-score years after, Carlyle himself beautifully describes the event: "How strangely vivid, how remote and wonderful, tinged with the views of far-off love and sadness, is that journey to me now after fifty-seven years of time! My mother and father walking with me in the dark frosty November morning through the village to set us on our way; my dear and loving mother, her tremulous affection, etc." That's the picture of an unknown boy going to the University to become what every pious Scotch mother wants her boy to be--a minister of the gospel.