For change of air the boy was sometimes sent to Glasgow, the great commercial capital being then no larger than a country market-town. Mightily astonished were his relatives, and, according to their own account, not a little scared, when of an evening his tongue was loosed, and he would launch into tales, wonderful things that held them entranced for hours, and sent them wakeful to bed. Was this time prophetic of those later years when he would hold men and women fascinated by the charm of his conversation? And now young James was sent to the Greenock Grammar School, but he made no great mark there, except in mathematics, in which he easily headed the class. But Latin and Greek are not a boy's only education. At home he was learning other things, from his parents' talk, from the pages of books. And then there were the long golden hours when he put on a leather apron like his father, and installed himself in his father's workshop with a small forge and a small bench all his own, and with his boyish fingers handled the tools so deftly and so cleverly that the workmen watching him exclaimed-- "Little Jamie has gotten a fortune at his fingers' ends." But while he worked his mind was not idle. He read eagerly and precociously, as a delicate child sometimes does, devouring all such books as he could lay hands on. Solid enough reading they will seem to boys to-day. _The Cloud of Witnesses_, Henry the Rymer's _Life of Wallace_, Boston, Bunyan. Added to this was his parents' talk, that fell on his young ears and stamped itself on his young mind, and the picturesque surroundings of his home, for he loved nature's beauties--the hills, the stars, the trees. The mountains and the plains about his home were made romantic by memories and associations of Covenanting times, told him by his father, and his boyish rambles were made beautiful by wild flowers, and again there were long delightful days of fishing to add to these. But in the midst of all this struggling in the boy's mind was that strong leaning to mechanical invention longing for an outlet. It peeped out here and there--for instance, in being unable to see an instrument without wishing to discover all its uses. And so well did he show himself able even then to fashion delicate things like compasses and quadrants--an instrument in shape like the fourth of a circle--that his father, after much thought, made up his mind that James should learn the trade of a mathematical instrument maker.