At the age of ten, David Livingstone went to work in the cotton factory as a piecer, and after some years was promoted to be a spinner. The first half-crown he earned he gave to his mother. With part of his first week's wages he bought a Latin text-book and studied that language with ardor in an evening class between eight and ten. He had to be in the factory at six in the morning and his work ended at eight at night. But by working at Latin until midnight he mastered Vergil and Horace by the time he was sixteen. He used to read in the factory by putting the book on the spinning- jenny so that he could catch a sentence at a time as he passed at his work. He was fond of botany and geology and zoology, and when he could get out would scour the country for specimens. Robert E. Speer, "Servants of the King."
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