STORY OF LIVINGSTONE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 39, 15 February 1930, Page 7

STORY OF LIVINGSTONE

THE "RAW-LOOKING YOUTH"

A story of David Livingstone, the great explorer, supplemented by another of a different kind, is told in the "Children's Newspaper." The writer says:—

I am an old woman now, but I was young once, and was the constant companion of a dear old uncle who remembered and told me many things about his youth. He was born in 1802 and died in 1883.

One of the things my uncle told me was that when a student in Glasgow University a rather raw-looking youth, clad in a coarse tweed suit, used 'to come in late to the classes, and sit near him on the end of the form next the door. It used to be left vacant for him. When the class was over he disappeared.

My uncle asked who this youth was, and was told that his name was David Livingstone, and that ho walked in from Blantyre every morning, which explainea why he was late. My uncle little thought how he would bo thrilled in after years when he heard of his fel-low-student, to whom he never spoke. My uncle passed on to Edinburgh afterward, and while attending the university there had a narrow escape of appearing on the dissecting table, being chased by the head of the Besurrectionist Society, a secret society which helped Burke and Hare to provide an anatomical lecturer with bodies for dissection.

The man Burke was hanged in the presence of a great crowd, but Hare, having turned King's evidence, lived on and died as a blind beggar in London. My uncle aucceded in escaping from them, however, by a ruse and his own presence of mind. He was a fine figure of a man and said the villains would have been brought to justice sooner than they were had they caught him, as he would have been recognised. In 1843 he was in Edinburgh again and saw the 500 ministers passing out of the Assembly Hall for conscience sake. These incidents he never could speak of without deep emotion.