The looms brought hardly anything, and the result was that twenty pounds more were needed to enable the family to pay passage to America.

Here let me record an act of friendship performed by a lifelong companion of my mother--who always attracted stanch friends because she was so stanch herself--Mrs.Henderson, by birth Ella Ferguson, the name by which she was known in our family.

She boldly ventured to advance the needful twenty pounds, my Uncles Lauder and Morrison guaranteeing repayment.
Uncle Lauder also lent his aid and advice, managing all the details for us, and on the 17th day of May, 1848, we left Dunfermline.

My father's age was then forty-three, my mother's thirty-three.

I was in my thirteenth year, my brother Tom in his fifth year--a beautiful white-haired child with lustrous black eyes, who everywhere attracted attention.
I had left school forever, with the exception of one winter's night-schooling in America, and later a French night-teacher for a time, and, strange to say, an elocutionist from whom I learned how to declaim.