homas
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.

Here is another picture, taken about sixty years later. In a somewhat
plainly furnished room in a house on a quiet street in Chelsea, a part
of London, an old man "worn, and tired, and bent, with deep-lined
features, a firm under-jaw, tufted gray hair, and tufted gray and
white beard, and sunken and unutterably sad eyes, is returning from
the fireplace, where with trembling fingers he had been lighting his
long clay pipe, and now he resumes his place at a reading desk." Let
us enter this room with Theodore L. Cuyler, who in his _Recollections
of a Long Life_ tells us: "Thirty years afterwards, in June, 1872, I
felt an irrepressible desire to see the grand old man once more, and I
accordingly addressed him a note, requesting him the favor of a few
minutes' interview.... After we had waited some time, a feeble,
stooping figure, attired in a long blue flannel gown, moved slowly
into the room. His gray hair was unkempt, his blue eyes were still
keen and piercing, and a bright hectic spot of red appeared on each of
his hollow cheeks. His hands were tremulous and his voice deep and
husky. After a few personal inquiries the old man broke out into a
most extraordinary and c