Rather are their working years too few now, not because they will it so but because it is with youth that the power-looms must be fed.

Well, this teaches them to make provision, and they have the means as they never had before.

Not in batches are boys now sent to college; the half-dozen a year have dwindled to one, doubtless because in these days they can begin to draw wages as they step out of their fourteenth year.

Here assuredly there is loss, but all the losses would be but a pebble in a sea of gain were it not for this, that with so many of the family, young mothers among them, working in the factories, home life is not so beautiful as it was.

So much of what is great in Scotland has sprung from the closeness of the family ties; it is there I sometimes fear that my country is being struck.