Life of Adam Smith | Page 7

Moderator
of the General Assembly, though in his case, as in so many others, the
path of professional success has led but to oblivion. Still he deserves
mention here, because, as his son-in-law, Professor Dalzel tells us, he
and Smith were much together again in their later Edinburgh days, and
there was none of all Smith's numerous friends whom he liked better or
spoke of with greater tenderness than Drysdale.[5] Drysdale's wife was
a sister of the brothers Adam, and Robert Adam stayed with Drysdale
on his visits to Edinburgh.
A small town like Kirkcaldy--it had then only 1500 inhabitants--is a not
unfavourable observatory for beginning one's knowledge of the world.
It has more sorts and conditions of men to exhibit than a rural district
can furnish, and it exhibits each more completely in all their ways,
pursuits, troubles, characters, than can possibly be done in a city. Smith,
who, spite of his absence of mind, was always an excellent observer,
would grow up in the knowledge of all about everybody in that little
place, from the "Lady Dunnikier," the great lady of the town, to its poor
colliers and salters who were still bondsmen. Kirkcaldy, too, had its
shippers trading with the Baltic, its customs officers, with many a good
smuggling story, and it had a nailery or two, which Smith is said to
have been fond of visiting as a boy, and to have acquired in them his
first rough idea of the value of division of labour.[6] However that may
be, Smith does draw some of his illustrations of the division of labour
from that particular business, which would necessarily be very familiar
to his mind, and it may have been in Kirkcaldy that he found the nailers

paid their wages in nails, and using these nails afterwards as a currency
in making their purchases from the shopkeepers.[7]
At school Smith was marked for his studious disposition, his love of
reading, and his power of memory; and by the age of fourteen he had
advanced sufficiently in classics and mathematics to be sent to
Glasgow College, with a view to obtaining a Snell exhibition to
Oxford.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Original letter in possession of Professor Cunningham, Belfast.
[2]
A COUNT OF MONEY DEBURSED ABOUT MR. SMITH'S
FUNERALL
To eight bottles of ale £0 12 0 To butter and eggs to the seed cake 1 4 0
To four bottles of ale 0 6 0 To three pounds fresh butter for bread 0 14
0 To one pound small candles 0 4 6 To two pounds bisquet 1 4 0 To
sixteen bottles of ale 1 4 0 To money sent to Edinr. for bisquet,
stockings, and necessars 25 4 0 To three expresses to Edinburgh 2 14 0
To a pair of murning shous to Hugh 1 10 0 To horse hyre with the wine
from Kinghorn 0 15 0 To the poor 3 6 0 To six bottles and eight pints
of ale to the beadels, etc. 1 10 4 To pipes and tobacco 0 4 0 To four
pints of ale to the workmen 0 12 8 To the postage of three letters 0 6 0
To making the grave 3 0 0 To caring the mourning letters thro' the town
and country 1 10 0 To the mort cloth 3 12 0 To Robert Martin for his
services 1 4 0 To Deacon Lessels for the coffin and ironwork 28 4 0 To
Deacon Sloan for lifting the stone 1 11 0 -------- Summa is £80 16 6
On the back is the docquet, "Account of funeral charges, Mr. Adam
Smith, 1723," and the formal receipt as follows: "Kirkaldie, Apl. 24,
1723. Received from Mr. James of Dunekier eighty pund sexteen
shilling six penes Scots in full of the within account depussd by me.
MARGRATE DOUGLASS."

"Mr. James of Dunekier" is Mr. James Oswald of Dunnikier, the father
of Smith's friend, the statesman of the same name, and he had
apparently as a friend of the family undertaken the duty of looking after
the funeral arrangements.
[3] In possession of Professor Cunningham.
[4] Grant's Burgh Schools of Scotland, p. 414.
[5] Drysdale's Sermons, Preface by Dalzel.
[6] Campbell, Journey from Edinburgh through North Britain, 1802, ii.
p. 49.
[7] Wealth of Nations, Book I. chap. iv.
CHAPTER II
STUDENT AT GLASGOW COLLEGE
A.D. 1737-1740. _Aet._ 14-17
Smith entered Glasgow College in 1737, no doubt in October, when the
session began, and he remained there till the spring of 1740. The arts
curriculum at that time extended over five sessions, so that Smith did
not complete the course required for a degree. In the three sessions he
attended he would go through the classes of Latin, Greek, Mathematics,
and Moral Philosophy, and have thus listened to the lectures