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lion's share. With drooping heads the family left Peebles, and took refuge in Edinburgh, "my mother," says her eldest son, "with but a few shillings in her pocket; there was not a half-penny in mine."

It was while their father's business in Peebles was flourishing, that William and Robert Chambers were born; the first in 1800, the other in 1802.

William, the elder, was sent to different schools, first to a dame's, next to a man named Gray, where the feewas 2s. 6d. per quarter for reading and writing, and 6d. additional for arithmetic. After that he went to the Grammar School, under a Mr. Sloan, where the fee for learning Latin was 5s. a quarter, and where his progresswas very indifferent. At both these schools Robert had followed his brother's steps, with this difference, that he had better abilities, or at any rate more applica tion, and soon became a favourite pupil. We need hardly say, that those were the days when boys wereflogged unmercifully, in return for which they kicked each other, harried birds' nests, and pelted cats. "I've brought you our Jock, mind ye lick him weel," were the words of a Spartan Peebles mother, dragging forward a young savage to be entered. While the boys were pursuing their education in this way it was greatly helped, so far as Robert was concerned, by a copy of the Encyclopædia Britannica, which an enterprising bookseller at Peebles had bought, and, finding no one cared to read it, had parted with it to Mr. Chambers, the father, who stowed it away in an attic. To that book, more than anything else, Robert attributes his taste for reading, and he relates the thankfulness which he felt when he discovered such a treasure stowed away in a. lumber room. So promising was Robert considered at the Grammar School, that he was left behind at Peebles. to pursue his studies when the family went to Edinburgh. in 1813.

With their arrival in the Scotch capital, the Dark Ages of the house of Chambers began, as the brothers afterwards jestingly called them. They lived in a poor way in a floor opening on a common stair in West

Nicolson Street, and their neighbours as well as themselves were "hard up," as William says. The elder Chambers tried with small success to continue his commission business, and privations ensued, for which his old German flute, preserved as a precious relic, was his chief consolation. William was now in his 14th year, and something must be done with him. At first his taste inclined to being an apprentice in a bookseller's shop, but, not succeeding at once in that, he was very nearly serving a grocer in the same capacity; but most fortunately, on presenting himself at the shop, he was pronounced by the grocer, after a competitive examination confined to his muscular powers, to be physically unfit for the office. On his way back, rather down-hearted, the boy saw in the shop of Mr. John Sutherland, Calton Street, the welcome announcement "An Apprentice Wanted." He presented himself, and was at once accepted. As for his duties, he was only to light the fire, take off and put on the shutters, clean and trim the oil lamps, sweep and dust the shop, and go all the errands. "When I had nothing to do," Mr. Sutherland said, "I was to stand behind the counter and help in anything that was wanted; and, talking of that, it would be quite contrary to rule for me ever to sit down or put off time in reading." The boy consoled himself on being told that "Constable and all the great booksellers had begun in that way;" and so, with the consent of his brave mother, who conducted the negotiation, William Chambers began life as John Sutherland's apprentice for five years, at 4s. a week. This was on the 8th of May, 1814.

About a year and a half after this event something turned up for the father. He was appointed commercial manager of the Joppa Pans, a salt manufactory between Portobello and Musselburgh, and thither they all went except William, for Robert had now left Peebles, and was at an Academy in Edinburgh, the arrangement being, so far as he was concerned, that he should walk to and from town daily. William was now left to his own resources, and at a little over fifteen had to make

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4s. a week serve for everything. He says he never had the smallest despondency on the subject. He was much assisted in his plans by an honest widow, a Peebles woman, who consented to let him have a bed, cook for him, and allow him to sit at her fireside for 1s. 6d. a week; the fire, as he remarks, being "not much to speak of." With regard to his food, he tells us, as a final achievement in the art of cheap living, I was able to make an outlay of 1s. 9d. suffice for the week." He thus had 9d. left out of his wages for other demands, chiefly for shoes, which were a heavy item. Thus the lad lived, and he can now write with honest pride, “On no occasion did I look to my parents for the slightest pecuniary subsidy."

As for his work, John Sutherland was a stern disciplinarian, and seemed to have no regard to the number of miles that his apprentices walked in the day. Besides his regular business, he kept a circulating library and was agent for a State Lottery. The duties of young William, therefore, besides the regular errands of a shop, combined that of carrying large parcels of books, and delivering the letters containing lottery tickets, so that in this latter respect he was little better than a postman. Still he had to bear it, and he consoled himself by an inscription which he passed daily over the doorway of an old house in the West Bow

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One would have thought the boy had work enough, but in the bitter winter of 1815-16 he was so fortunate as to hear of a literary baker, who, passionately fond of reading, had no leisure to read himself, but would give him a penny roll from his oven every baking morning if he would go early, say at five a.m., and read aloud to him and his two sons, while they were preparing their batch of bread. He accepted the offer, and long read for two hours and a half every morning to the baker, who allowed him to choose his subject, only stipulating that it should be something comic and laughable.

On Saturday nights, between nine and ten o'clock, for

several years, the hard-worked apprentice walked down to Portobello to see his family, and spend Sunday with them. On that holy day the noxious salt pans ceased to smoke and poison the face of the country, and, after church, the brothers had long walks over the neighbourhood. On Monday morning he was up and away to take down the shutters, cheered by admonitory hints from his mother to avoid low company and "aye to haud forrit," while his father was full of wise maxims to his son on the great good of self-denial, and the absolute necessity of independence in life. It so happened that the views of Mr. Chambers did not comport with his duties as manager of the salt-works. The business was really a contraband one, arising out of the profit made by smuggling salt into England. This did not suit the manager's views of propriety, and for some reason or other a quarrel arose between him and his employers, which was heightened when Mr. Chambers was waylaid and robbed of some money which he had collected in Edinburgh, knocked down, and bruised about the head. He was found lying helpless on the road, and, in the words of his son, "the painful circumstances connected with this untoward affair led to his being discharged." With her husband in this helpless state, everything fell on his wife. All the son could do was to press into his mother's hand half a sovereign, which some lucky holder of a lottery-ticket had given him, and to hasten back to work. Mrs. Chambers set up a small business on the road to Musselburgh, where she, by great exertions, maintained herself, her husband, and her young children, while her sons, now at the very darkest period of those dark ages, fought the battle of life for themselves in Edinburgh.

But

In the meantime, Robert's education had come to an -end, leaving him a good Latin and general scholar, with a turn for those antiquarian and topographical pursuits which stood him in such good stead in after life. now the time had come when he, too, must do something for himself. For a while he tried tuition, and walked ten miles a day to and from his work with poor

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requital, but at the end of six months this came to an end, and after a few weeks he was discharged" from a similar situation as "too stupid." At this moment a brilliant idea came over his brother William. Nothing less than that Robert should set up as a bookseller, using for his stock-in-trade a number of old books which the family had dragged about with them from place to place. So, with their father's consent, all the old books, except one old family Bible, were handed over to Robert, and with them, at the age of sixteen, in the year 1818, he set up a bookstall in Leith Walk. He hired a poor shop, at a yearly rent of £6, with space for a stall in front, and there William went to live with him and keep him company. It was in May, 1819, that William's apprenticeship came to an end, and then with five shillings in his pocket, his last week's wages, he was, at nineteen years of age, left to his devices. The success which had attended Robert's venture was such as to encourage William to try the same line, but then Robert had carried off all the family books, and there were none left for William as his stock-in-trade. But here fortune favoured him by bringing an active London publisher, who dealt in remainders, to Edinburgh, where he held a sale, at which William was useful to him. Taking a fancy to the young man, the publisher allowed him to choose on credit a sufficient stock to set up a stall, and from that moment the Dark Ages began to grow lighter with both the brothers, and their career afterwards was one of constant success. Of course, as Rome was not built in a day, they found it hard work; and they even made their own stalls, William being especially handy in this way. On the first day William cleared a profit of 9s. 3d., which put him in high spirits. As the contents of his stall disappeared, day by day, he bought fresh parcels of books at auctions, and both the brothers were soon regularly recognized as belonging to the trade, which they eked out in various ways by selling flutes and other things saleable in Leith Walk, then, as now, the great thoroughfare between Edinburgh and her seaport. "Within six months," says

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