e I have the
satisfaction of feeling that I became useful to my parents even at the
early age of ten. Soon after that the accounts of the various people
who dealt with the shop were entrusted to my keeping so that I became
acquainted, in a small way, with business affairs even in childhood.

One cause of misery there was, however, in my school experience. The
boys nicknamed me "Martin's pet," and sometimes called out that
dreadful epithet to me as I passed along the street. I did not know
all that it meant, but it seemed to me a term of the utmost
opprobrium, and I know that it kept me from responding as freely as I
should otherwise have done to that excellent teacher, my only
schoolmaster, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude which I regret I never
had opportunity to do more than acknowledge before he died.

I may mention here a man whose influence over me cannot be
overestimated, my Uncle Lauder, George Lauder's father.[9] My father
was necessarily constantly at work in the loom shop and had little
leisure to bestow upon me through the day. My uncle being a shopkeeper
in the High Street was not thus tied down. Note the location, for this
was among the shopkeeping aristocracy, and high and varied degrees of
aristocracy there were even among shopkeepers in Dunfermline. Deeply
affected by my Aunt Seaton's death, which occurred about the beginning
of my school life, he found his chief solace in the companionship of
his only son, George, and myself. He possessed an extraordinary gift
of dealing with children and taught us many things. Among others I
remember how he taught us British history by imagining each of the
monarchs in a certain place upon the walls of the room performing the
act for which he was well known. Thus for me King John sits to this
day above the mantelpiece signing the Magna Charta, and Queen Victoria
is on the back of the door with her children on her knee.

[Footnote 9: The Lauder Technical College given by Mr. Carnegie to
Dunfermline was named in honor of this uncle, George Lauder.]

It may be taken for granted that the omission which, years after, I
found in the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey was fully supplied in
our list of monarchs. A slab in a small chapel at Westminster says
that the body of Oliver Cromwell was removed from there. In the list
of the monarchs which I learned at my uncle's knee the grand
republican monarch appeared writing his message to the Pope of Rome,
informing His Holine