The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1882-07-26
A WOMAN
To Whom God Had Given a Love Of
Books.

= From John Brigbfs Birmingham Speech
| Janet Hamilton lived in the town Of
: Coatbridge, in Lanarkshire, if 1 am not
{ mistaken. should like to tell YOU
what can be done by one to whom God
r has given great love of books. Janet
Hamilton was the daughter of shoe
3 maker, who employed one iourneyman,
and, as might be reasonably supposed,
. she became the wife of that Journey.
man (laughter) at very early ace.
earlier than l should recommend in
similar cases. However, during her
life she had family of ten children.
most of whom, | believe, grew up TO
manhood and womanhood (hear. hearl.
But she never went to school, and her
mother, who was the shoemaker's wife.
who taught her to read, did not learn
to read till she was so; she became
blind at 60, and she lived, / think, to
be about 75 or 76.
As for the points of her life, she never
saw mountain, she never saw any river
but the river Clyde, and she never was
twenty miles away from her own hum
bic dwelling. She read in her child.
hood at or 6 years of age Bible stories,
little stories that her mother procured
for her, and at years of age she found
by accident on the beam Of a weaver's
loom in her neighborhood two volumes,
one was Paradise Lost" and the other
was Allan Ramsay's poems. She read
with extraordinary eagerness, and did
not forget what she read, which some
of us are apt to do.
She read through the village library,
history, biography, travels and when
she got to Shakespeare, Shakespeare
was like revelation to her. TCheers.
She had no words in which she could
express her admiration for his writings,
and she said that in those days it was
not considered a very good thing for
serious people to read Shakespeare.
Laughter. There was hole in the
wall in her house near the chair on
which she nursed her children, and
where she worked on some kind of tam
bour frame; and when people came in
she put the Shakespeare into the hole
in the wall, so that it might not be seen,
and her conduct criticised. She said
that in her childhood her mother had
led her every morning, after she could
read, to read chapter in her Bible,
which was done without intermission
ill she left her home and had home
If her own. Her love of books was her
'uling passion, Notwithstanding tho
character of her childhood and the work
The had to do. So far as | know moth
ng was neglected, but she suffered from
sitting up to read till two O'clock in the
aorning, for she believed that it had
he effect of very much injuring and at
asst depriving her of her sight.
Somebody asked her how, having
lever been to school, she wrote so uccu.
ately-not only in newspaper but she
7rote also for one of Cassell's publica-
ions when 54 yerrs of age, aud it is
lmost impossible now to read her writ
lg, the letters are so curiously formed;
ut she was asked how she came TO write
} dramatically, and she replied:
You may as we'll ask why the lark CT n
ng." God had given her not, as Sr
avid Dundas said, "a great love If
ooks," but natural gift of grammar.
Laughter. This old lady has written
1ems, of which, if there we're time, /
ould have quoted two or three, but
,rtainly there are some of them which,
placed among the poems Of Burns in
volume of his, no one would for q mo-
ent doubt they were the production Of
lie greatest of all the Scotch poets.