Our morning lesson was usually from the Scriptures, but throughout the day from other books. Our parents were, themselves, as eager to obtain knowledge as they were anxious to impart it to us. An hour was allowed for meals: when our father came to breakfast or dinner, as soon as the repast was finished, (and a working man in health does not usually loiter over his meals,) our mother used to read aloud till the hour was finished, either with the youngest child upon her knee, or, if it was in the cradle, knitting while she read. She used to say, that it was disagreeable and improper to be bustling about while father was within; and when he was gone out, the work must be done up. At these times, books of every kind that came to hand were read, unless, indeed, there was in their language or morality something very bad. Nor were any of us, so far as I recollect, ever restricted in our reading; books of all kinds, which came within our reach, were free to us. Some may be disposed to condemn this laxity, as they may consider it; but with the limited means our parents possessed of purchasing books, and being far distant from any town or village where they might have had a choice from a library, it was not strange that all that by any means came to hand should be eagerly perused: books were not then so plentiful, nor so various, as at present. Well do I remember my brother finding a torn leaf of a little school-book in a bush in the haugh--it had been caught there when the stream was swollen by heavy rains. What a prize it was! one by one, we committed it to memory, while stretched upon the daisied sward, during the sunny hours of a summer Sabbath-day; and I do not believe that there is one of the young group who then learned the beautiful hymn that stray leaf contained, who does not retain its simple words indelibly impressed upon the memory, and feel in a renewed heart the influences of the blessed truths taught in its lines. It was the hymn beginning, “Among the deepest shades of night, Can there be One who sees my way?” If our parents’ plan of reading, and allowing us to read, all that came in the way, had any danger in it, it was in our case counteracted by the free conversation about what was read, which usually followed, and by the duty constantly inculcated, and practised by themselves, of reading and searching the Scriptures as the standard by which every practice, principle and opinion, in religion or morality, must be tested. We were taught to view the Bible as the words of an infallible Teacher, by which the instructions of every other were to be tried, and only to be received in so far as they were in accordance with this heaven-descended guide: we were, thus early, led to analyse what we read, to exercise our understandings upon whatever came in our way, and to receive nothing as truth, until it had been put to the test of the Divine word.