son of his mother. When the looms stopped and the
piteous voice of the father said, "Andy, we have no work," the mother
lifted up her voice and sang one of the songs of Zion. There were always
morning prayers. When there was no work, the father would have forgotten
the prayers, because there was nothing to be thankful for, and prayer
wouldn't stop the steam-factory. "What's the use!" was the motto of
Carnegie the Elder.

The mother led the prayers just the same. There was a reading from the
Bible. Then each one present responded with a verse of Scripture. Legend
says that little Andy, once, at seven years of age, when it came his
turn to give a verse from the Bible, handed in this: "Let every tub
stand on its own bottom." But as the quotation was not exactly
acceptable, he tried again with this: "Take care of the pence and the
pounds will take care of themselves." Thus do we see that the orphic
habit was already beginning to germinate.

Before Andrew Carnegie was ten years old he had evolved a beautiful
hatred of kings, princes and all hereditary titles. There was only one
nobility for him, and that was the nobility of honest effort. To live
off another's labor was to him a sin. To eat and not earn was a crime.
These sterling truths were the inheritance of mother to son. And these
convictions Andrew Carnegie still holds and has firmly held since
childhood's days.

The other day, in reading a book on military tactics, I came across
this: "An army has but two duties to perform: one is to fight the enemy
and the other is to evade the enemy." Which duty is the more important
the writer did not say. So let that pass. There are two ways of dealing
with misery. One is to stay and fight the demon to a finish, and the
other way is to beat a hasty and honorable retreat.

"There is no work."

"Then we will go where work is," said the mother of a
multimillionaire-to-be. The furniture went to pay the grocer. The looms
were sold for a song. The debts were paid, and there was enough, with
the contribution of a ten-pound note by a fond uncle, to buy passage to
New York for the father, mother, Thomas and Andrew. It was the year
Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight. Thomas was sixteen, and Andrew was eleven.
Tom was more handsome than Andy, but Andy had the most to say. The
Carnegies came to Pittsburgh, because the mother's two sisters from
Dunfermline were in Pittsburgh, and they had always gotten enough to
eat. Then the sound of the nam