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.