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HIS EARLY YEARS GAVE A Beautiful Promise
OF VIGOUR OF UNDERSTANDING,

KINDNESS OF Heart,

AND

CHRISTIAN NOBLENESS OF PRINCIPLE: HIS MANHOOD ABUNDANTLY FULFilled It.

-Dr. Arnold's Inscription to the Memory of G. Evelyn, Esq,

CHAPTER L

BOYHOOD.

N the little village of Rhynie, situated in an obscure nook of the agricultural county of Aberdeen, on the 13th of October, 1849, Alexander M. Mackay first saw the light. His father was Free Church minister of the parish, but at this date had not yet entered the Manse, but occupied the house which for many years afterwards was the early home of James Macdonell, the distinguished journalist, whose life has recently been so graphically written by the editor of the British Weekly.

About the same time the Manses of the neighbouring parishes of Keig, Insch, and Auchindoir gave to the world respectively Professor Wm. Robertson Smith, Professor Wm. Grey Elmslie, and Dr. Wm. Robertson Nicoll; while about two years later was born, in the secluded Manse of Half Morton, in Dumfriesshire, Dr. John Smith, destined to become the loved friend and companion of Mackay, as medical missionary in the Nyanza Pioneer Expedition.

One asks, how do these Free Church Manses produce such extraordinary men? Some attribute it to the stern training in duty, others to the bracing

influence of the Calvinistic creed. A celebrated London physician declares it is due to the severity of the northern climate, while another suggests that the oatmeal is especially favourable to intellectual vitality. But whatever truth there may be in these opinions, we are inclined to think that it is mainly due to the Spirit of Christ in the home, to the purity of the parents' lives, to the godly upbringing of their children, and to the intellectual atmosphere to which they are accustomed, consequent largely on the university training and literary tastes and friendships of the father, in a word, plain living, high thinking, and that "godliness which is profitable to all things."

Mackay's father was himself an ardent student, and a man of marked ability; and as in the extreme rigour of the long winter (besides his pulpit ministrations) little parochial work could be done, he devoted considerable time to the publication of various scientific books; and being a born teacher of youth, nothing delighted him more than the instruction of his boy, who until the age of fourteen years learned everything he knew from him. We well remember him

"With a forehead fair and saintly,
Which two blue eyes undershine,
Like meek prayers before a shrine'

at the age of three years reading the New Testament with fluency, while at seven years of age his textbooks were Milton's "Paradise Lost," Russell's

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HIS FATHER'S COMPANION.

and Fall of the Roman Empire," and Robertson's "History of the Discovery of America." He was his father's constant companion in his walks, and to this day the villagers recall how they wondered at seeing them so frequently stop to look for something on the road, while the fact was that the father with his stick was demonstrating a proposition of Euclid, tracing out the supposed course of the river Zambesi, illustrating the elliptical motion of the planets, or, as the case might be, describing some huge calamites he had found in the lowermost strata of the Old Red Sandstone, hitherto supposed to be unfossiliferous. In this way the boy acquired a vast amount of information on all sorts of subjects; and as letters were often received at the Manse, and read and talked about in his presence, from such men as Hugh Miller, Sir Roderick I. Murchison, Professor Piazzi Smythe, and A. Keith Johnston, H.M. Geographer for Scotland, his mind seemed to develop rapidly.

In the autumn of 1859, prior to the meeting of the British Association in Aberdeen, Sir Roderick Murchison and Sir A. Ramsay, of H. M. Geological Survey, being on a tour through Scotland, were guests for a few days at the Manse, and were greatly attracted by the boy's wonderful skill in map-drawing, and by the dexterity of his fingers in type-setting, and the accuracy of the proof-sheets which he could turn out from his little printing press. Sir Roderick presented him with a copy of "Small Beginnings, or the Way to Get On," which seemed to fire his youthful ambition.

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But a change gradually came upon the boy, and from eleven to thirteen years of age, nature seemed to assert itself, and from being formerly engrossed with his studies, he almost discarded books and occupied himself with the Manse garden and glebe, and to attending the pony, etc. He also became greatly interested in machinery, and instead of playing with his companions, he would on any favourable opportunity walk four miles to the railway station and four back, on the chance of getting a good look at the engine, as the train stopped for a minute or two on its way to Huntly; while his favourite haunts were the village smithy, gas works, carding mill, and the little shops of the carpenter and saddler, in which places, owing to his attractive manners and the vast store of fun in him, he was extremely popular. To the parents this was a great disappointment, as they had destined him for the ministry; but as the old German hymn says, "Was Gott thut, das ist wohlgethan!" and all this was a necessary thread in the texture of preparation for the work which he had yet to do. At the end of two years, however, he voluntarily returned to books, and began again to devour all kinds of literature, and to make great progress in the classics and mathematics; but as his father's ministerial duties allowed little leisure to superin 1864 to the Gram

tend his studies, he was sent in mar School at Aberdeen. Here he worked well, although his parents were not a little concerned to hear that some friends who were desirous of showing

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