Her
son-in-law and daughter, both my full cousins, though unrelated to
each other, had risen to this sublime height, and nothing was too
great to predict for her promising nephew. There is an aristocracy
even in shopkeeping, and the family of the green grocer of the High
Street mingles not upon equal terms with him of Moodie Street.
Auntie, who had often played my nurse, liked to dwell upon the fact
that I was a screaming infant that had to be fed with two spoons, as I
yelled whenever one left my mouth. Captain Jones, our superintendent
of the steel works at a later day, described me as having been born
"with two rows of teeth and holes punched for more," so insatiable was
my appetite for new works and increased production. As I was the first
child in our immediate family circle, there were plenty of now
venerable relatives begging to be allowed to play nurse, my aunties
among them. Many of my childhood pranks and words they told me in
their old age. One of them that the aunties remembered struck me as
rather precocious.
I had been brought up upon wise saws and one that my father had taught
me was soon given direct application. As a boy, returning from the
seashore three miles distant, he had to carry me part of the way upon
his back. Going up a steep hill in the gloaming he remarked upon the
heavy load, hoping probably I would propose to walk a bit.
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