Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/188

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860 WORKMEN AND HEROES

Civil War, is not yet extinct. Partisanship has biassed the most of his biogra- phers. The intense feeling underlying the presidential campaign of 1856 did not conduce to a fair estimate of the man, who has suffered hardly less from the in- tense admiration of his friends than from jealousies of rivals and foes. " I tried to do my duty," he would say in his old age, when asked to explain knotty points about the conquest. " All that he ever did for the Government," says one who knew him well, " was uniformly repaid with injury." That is the verdict of one side of the con- troversy. The sifting and weighing of a mass of conflicting evidence, preceding the final verdict of permanent history, is not yet ended in Fremont's case. That the outcome will be illumination of his fame rather than obscuration, his un- swerving defenders do not doubt " Though the Pathfinders die, the paths remain open." jLsti^ h^u^fjC^^^p^ DAVID LIVINGSTONE By Professor W. G. Blaikie, LL.D. (1813-1873) D ^avid Livingstone, missionary and travel- ler, was born at Blantyre, in Lanarkshire, March 19, 1813. His parents, who were in humble life, were of devout and exemplary character ; his father in particular being a great reader, especially of travels and mission- ary intelligence, and much interested in the enterprise of the nineteenth century. At the age of ten David became a worker in a cotton- factory at Blantyre, and continued in that la- borious occupation for fourteen years. His thirst for knowledge led him to read all that he could lay his hands on ; he used also to at- tend a night-class, after the long hours of the factory, for the study of Latin. The reading of Dick's " Philosophy of a Future State " was not only the means of a profound impression on his mind, but kindled the desire to devote his life as a missionary to the ser- vice of Christ. Deeply impressed with the advantages of medical training to a missionary, he