Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie
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 Holiness that "if he did not cease persecuting the
Protestants the thunder of Great Britain's cannon would be heard in
the Vatican." It is needless to say that the estimate we formed of
Cromwell was that he was worth them "a' thegither."
It was from my uncle I learned all that I know of the early history of
Scotland--of Wallace and Bruce and Burns, of Blind Harry's history, of
Scott, Ramsey, Tannahill, Hogg, and Fergusson. I can truly say in the
words of Burns that there was then and there created in me a vein of
Scottish prejudice (or patriotism) which will cease to exist only with
life. Wallace, of course, was our hero. Everything heroic centered in
him. Sad was the day when a wicked big boy at school told me that
England was far larger than Scotland. I went to the uncle, who had the
remedy.
"Not at all, Naig; if Scotland were rolled out flat as England,
Scotland would be the larger, but would you have the Highlands rolled
down?"
Oh, never! There was balm in Gilead for the wounded young patriot.
Later the greater population of England was forced upon me, and again
to the uncle I went.
"Yes, Naig, seven to one, but there were more than that odds against
us at Bannockburn." And again there was joy in my heart--joy that
there were more English men there since the glory was the greater.
This is something of a commentary upon the truth that war breeds war,
that every battle sows the seeds of future battles, and that thus
nations become traditional enemies. The experience of American boys is
that of the Scotch. They grow up to read of Washington and Valley
Forge, of Hessians hired to kill Americans, and they come to hate the
very name of Englishman. Such was my experience with my American
nephews. Scotland was all right, but England that had fought Scotland
was the wicked partner. Not till they became men was the prejudice
eradicated, and even yet some of it may linger.
Uncle Lauder has told me since that he often brought people into the
room assuring them that he could make "Dod" (George Lauder) and me
weep, laugh, or close our little fists ready to fight--in short, play
upon all our moods through the influence of poetry and song. The
betrayal of Wallace was his trump card which never failed to cause our
little hearts to sob, a complete breakdown being the invariable
result. Often as he told the story it never lost its hold. No doubt it
received from time to time new embellishments. My uncle's stories
never wanted "the hat and the stick" which Scott gave his. How
wonderful is the influence of a hero upon children!
I spent many hours and evenings in the High Street with my uncle and
"Dod," and thus began a lifelong brotherly alliance between the latter
and myself. "Dod" and "Naig" we always were in the family. I could not
say "George" in infancy and he could not get more than "Naig" out of
Carnegie, and it has always been "Dod" and "Naig" with us. No other
names would mean anything.
There were two roads by which to return from my uncle's house in the
High Street to my home in Moodie Street at the foot of the town, one
along the eerie churchyard of the Abbey among the dead, where there
was no light; and the other along the lighted streets by way of the
May Gate. When it became necessary for me to go home, my uncle, with a
wicked pleasure, would ask which way I was going. Thinking what
Wallace would do, I always replied I was going by the Abbey. I have
the satisfaction of believing that never, not even upon one occasion,
did I yield to the temptation to take the other turn and follow the
lamps at the junction of the May Gate. I often passed along that
churchyard and through the dark arch of the Abbey with my heart in my
mouth. Trying to whistle and keep up my courage, I would plod through
the darkness, falling back in all emergencies upon the thought of what
Wallace would have done if he had met with any foe, natural or
supernatural.
King Robert the Bruce never got justice from my cousin or myself in
childhood. It was enough for us that he was a king while Wallace was
the man of the people. Sir John Graham was our second. The intensity
of a Scottish boy's patriotism, reared as I was, constitutes a real
force in his life to the very end. If the source of my stock of that
prime article--courage--were studied, I am sure the final analysis
would find it founded upon Wallace, the hero of Scotland. It is a
tower of strength for a boy to have a hero.
It gave me a pang to find when I reached America that there was any
other country which pretended to have anything to be proud of. What
was a country without Wallace, Bruce, and Burns? I find in the
untraveled Scotsman of to-day something still of this feeling. It
remains for maturer years and wider knowledge to tell us that every
nation has its heroes, its romance, its traditions, and its
achievements; and while the true Scotsman will not find reason in
after years to lower the estimate he has formed of his own country and
of its position even among the larger nations of the earth, he will
find ample reason to raise his opinion of other nations because they
all have much to be proud of--quite enough to stimulate their sons so
to act their parts as not to disgrace the land that gave them birth.
It was years before I could feel that the new land could be anything
but a temporary abode. My heart was in Scotland. I resembled Principal
Peterson's little boy who, when in Canada, in reply to a question,
said he liked Canada "very well for a visit, but he could never live
so far away from the remains of Bruce and Wallace."
CHAPTER II
DUNFERMLINE AND AMERICA
My good Uncle Lauder justly set great value upon recitation in
education, and many were the pennies which Dod and I received for
this. In our little frocks or shirts, our sleeves rolled up, paper
helmets and blackened faces, with laths for swords, my cousin and
myself were kept constantly reciting Norval and Glenalvon, Roderick
Dhu and James Fitz-James to our schoolmates and often to the older
people.
I remember distinctly that in the celebrated dialogue between Norval
and Glenalvon we had some qualms about repeating the phrase,--"and
false as _hell_." At first we made a slight cough over the
objectionable word which always created amusement among the
spectators. It was a great day for us when my uncle persuaded us that
we could say "hell" without swearing. I am afraid we practiced it very
often. I always played the part of Glenalvon and made a great mouthful
of the word. It had for me the wonderful fascination attributed to
forbidden fruit. I can well understand the story of Marjory Fleming,
who being cross one morning when Walter Scott called and asked how she
was, answered:
"I am very cross this morning, Mr. Scott. I just want to say 'damn'
[with a swing], but I winna."
Thereafter the expression of the one fearful word was a great point.
Ministers could say "damnation" in the pulpit without sin, and so we,
too, had full range on "hell" in recitation. Another passage made a
deep impression. In the fight between Norval and Glenalvon, Norval
says, "When we contend again our strife is mortal." Using these words
in an article written for the "North American Review" in 1897, my
uncle came across them and immediately sat down and wrote me from
Dunfermline that he knew where I had found the words. He was the only
man living who did.
My power to memorize must have been greatly strengthened by the mode
of teaching adopted by my uncle. I cannot name a more important means
of benefiting young people than encouraging them to commit favorite
pieces to memory and recite them often. Anything which pleased me I
could learn with a rapidity which surprised partial friends. I could
memorize anything whether it pleased me or not, but if it did not
impress me strongly it passed away in a few hours.
One of the trials of my boy's life at school in Dunfermline was
committing to memory two double verses of the Psalms which I had to
recite daily. My plan was not to look at the psalm until I had started
for school. It was not more than five or six minutes' slow walk, but I
could readily master the task in that time, and, as the psalm was the
first lesson, I was prepared and passed through the ordeal
successfully. Had I been asked to repeat the psalm thirty minutes
afterwards the attempt would, I fear, have ended in disastrous
failure.
The first penny I ever earned or ever received from any person beyond
the family circle was one from my school-teacher, Mr. Martin, for
repeating before the school Burns's poem, "Man was made to Mourn." In
writing this I am reminded that in later years, dining with Mr. John
Morley in London, the conversation turned upon the life of Wordsworth,
and Mr. Morley said he had been searching his Burns for the poem to
"Old Age," so much extolled by him, which he had not been able to find
under that title. I had the pleasure of repeating part of it to him.
He promptly handed me a second penny. Ah, great as Morley is, he
wasn't my school-teacher, Mr. Martin--the first "great" man I ever
knew. Truly great was he to me. But a hero surely is "Honest John"
Morley.
In religious matters we were not much hampered. While other boys and
girls at school were compelled to learn the Shorter Catechism, Dod and
I, by some arrangement the details of which I never clearly
understood, were absolved. All of our family connections, Morrisons
and Lauders, were advanced in their theological as in their political
views, and had objections to the catechism, I have no doubt. We had
not one orthodox Presbyterian in our family circle. My father, Uncle
and Aunt Aitken, Uncle Lauder, and also my Uncle Carnegie, had fallen
away from the tenets of Calvinism. At a later day most of them found
refuge for a time in the doctrines of Swedenborg. My mother was always
reticent upon religious subjects. She never mentioned these to me nor
did she attend church, for she had no servant in those early days and
did all the housework, including cooking our Sunday dinner. A great
reader, always, Channing the Unitarian was in those days her special
delight. She was a marvel!
During my childhood the atmosphere around me was in a state of violent
disturbance in matters theological as well as political. Along with
the most advanced ideas which were being agitated in the political
world--the death of privilege, the equality of the citizen,
Republicanism--I heard many disputations upon theological subjects
which the impressionable child drank in to an extent quite unthought
of by his elders. I well remember that the stern doctrines of
Calvinism lay as a terrible nightmare upon me, but that state of mind
was soon over, owing to the influences of which I have spoken. I
grew up treasuring within me the fact that my father had risen and
left the Presbyterian Church one day when the minister preached the
doctrine of infant damnation. This was shortly after I had made my