rt in his time was John Drysdale,
the minister's son, who became one of the ministers of Edinburgh,
doctor of divinity, chaplain to the king, leader of an ecclesiastical
party--of the Moderates in succession to Robertson--twice Moderator of
the General Assembly, though in his case, as in so many others, the
path of professional success has led but to oblivion. Still he
deserves mention here, because, as his son-in-law, Professor Dalzel
tells us, he and Smith were much together again in their later
Edinburgh days, and there was none of all Smith's numerous friends
whom he liked better or spoke of with greater tenderness than
Drysdale.[5] Drysdale's wife was a sister of the brothers Adam, and
Robert Adam stayed with Drysdale on his visits to Edinburgh.

A small town like Kirkcaldy--it had then only 1500 inhabitants--is a
not unfavourable observatory for beginning one's knowledge of the
world. It has more sorts and conditions of men to exhibit than a rural
district can furnish, and it exhibits each more completely in all
their ways, pursuits, troubles, characters, than can possibly be done
in a city. Smith, who, spite of his absence of mind, was always an
excellent observer, would grow up in the knowledge of all about
everybody in that little place, from the "Lady Dunnikier," the great
lady of the town, to its poor colliers and salters who were still
bondsmen. Kirkcaldy, too, had its shippers trading with the Baltic,
its customs officers, with many a good smuggling story, and it had a
nailery or two, which Smith is said to have been fond of visiting as a
boy, and to have acquired in them his first rough idea of the value of
division of labour.[6] However that may be, Smith does draw some of
his illustrations of the division of labour from that particular
business, which would necessarily be very familiar to his mind, and it
may have been in Kirkcaldy that he found the nailers paid their wages
in nails, and using these nails afterwards as a currency in making
their purchases from the shopkeepers.[7]

At school Smith was marked for his studious disposition, his love of
reading, and his power of memory; and by the age of fourteen he had
advanced sufficiently in classics and mathematics to be sent to
Glasgow College, with a view to obtaining a Snell exhibition to
Oxford.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Original letter in possession of Professor Cunningham, Belfast.

[2]

A COUNT OF MONEY DEBURSED ABOUT MR. SMITH'S FUNERALL

T