Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie | Page 5

begins:
"The King sits in Dunfermline tower,[5] Drinking the bluid red wine."
[Footnote 5: The Percy Reliques and The Oxford Book of Ballads give
"town" instead of "tower"; but Mr. Carnegie insisted that it should be
"tower."]
The tomb of The Bruce is in the center of the Abbey, Saint Margaret's
tomb is near, and many of the "royal folk" lie sleeping close around.
Fortunate, indeed, the child who first sees the light in that romantic
town, which occupies high ground three miles north of the Firth of
Forth, overlooking the sea, with Edinburgh in sight to the south, and to
the north the peaks of the Ochils clearly in view. All is still redolent of
the mighty past when Dunfermline was both nationally and religiously

the capital of Scotland.
The child privileged to develop amid such surroundings absorbs poetry
and romance with the air he breathes, assimilates history and tradition
as he gazes around. These become to him his real world in
childhood--the ideal is the ever-present real. The actual has yet to come
when, later in life, he is launched into the workaday world of stern
reality. Even then, and till his last day, the early impressions remain,
sometimes for short seasons disappearing perchance, but only
apparently driven away or suppressed. They are always rising and
coming again to the front to exert their influence, to elevate his thought
and color his life. No bright child of Dunfermline can escape the
influence of the Abbey, Palace, and Glen. These touch him and set fire
to the latent spark within, making him something different and beyond
what, less happily born, he would have become. Under these inspiring
conditions my parents had also been born, and hence came, I doubt not,
the potency of the romantic and poetic strain which pervaded both.
As my father succeeded in the weaving business we removed from
Moodie Street to a much more commodious house in Reid's Park. My
father's four or five looms occupied the lower story; we resided in the
upper, which was reached, after a fashion common in the older Scottish
houses, by outside stairs from the pavement. It is here that my earliest
recollections begin, and, strangely enough, the first trace of memory
takes me back to a day when I saw a small map of America. It was
upon rollers and about two feet square. Upon this my father, mother,
Uncle William, and Aunt Aitken were looking for Pittsburgh and
pointing out Lake Erie and Niagara. Soon after my uncle and Aunt
Aitken sailed for the land of promise.
At this time I remember my cousin-brother, George Lauder ("Dod"),
and myself were deeply impressed with the great danger overhanging
us because a lawless flag was secreted in the garret. It had been painted
to be carried, and I believe was carried by my father, or uncle, or some
other good radical of our family, in a procession during the Corn Law
agitation. There had been riots in the town and a troop of cavalry was
quartered in the Guildhall. My grandfathers and uncles on both sides,

and my father, had been foremost in addressing meetings, and the
whole family circle was in a ferment.
I remember as if it were yesterday being awakened during the night by
a tap at the back window by men who had come to inform my parents
that my uncle, Bailie Morrison, had been thrown into jail because he
had dared to hold a meeting which had been forbidden. The sheriff with
the aid of the soldiers had arrested him a few miles from the town
where the meeting had been held, and brought him into the town during
the night, followed by an immense throng of people.[6]
[Footnote 6: At the opening of the Lauder Technical School in October,
1880, nearly half a century after the disquieting scenes of 1842, Mr.
Carnegie thus recalled the shock which was given to his boy mind:
"One of my earliest recollections is that of being wakened in the
darkness to be told that my Uncle Morrison was in jail. Well, it is one
of the proudest boasts I can make to-day to be able to say that I had an
uncle who was in jail. But, ladies and gentlemen, my uncle went to jail
to vindicate the rights of public assembly." (Mackie.)]
Serious trouble was feared, for the populace threatened to rescue him,
and, as we learned afterwards, he had been induced by the provost of
the town to step forward to a window overlooking the High Street and
beg the people to retire. This he did, saying: "If there be a friend of the
good cause here to-night, let him fold his arms." They did so. And then,
after a pause, he said, "Now depart in peace!"[7]