The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-10-03

principal and almost its only street
FROM the south this highway leads
through pleasant country. well watered
ana wooded and charmiugly broken by
clumps of ancient trees or newer planta-
lions and small, well-tilled fields. Be
yond the hamlet the road winds upward
for a mile or more to as bleak, sugges-
lively dreary and hopeless horizon as YOU
VIII often come upon in Normandy or as
are seen IN the peasant pictures of Brit
tany by the master hand of Millet. To
the northeast there are dim outlines of
the Hartfell and other mountain ranges
Away to the southeast are the misty
wales of lovely Annandale and to the
northwest but four miles distant the
legend-haunted hill of Brunswark. where
the boy Carlyle often wandered, lifts its
Roman-camped head into the feecy,
vagrant clouds
Ecclefechan has great age but little
history, aside from having produced this
one famous man. At about the center of
the village, where a highway leaves
the old Carlisle and Glasgow post-rOad to
wander through the valley of Amman to
the Solway-side town of that name, a
little cross-street formed by this road,
runs few rods with it and stops short
by an ancient graveyard. In this lies
Carlyle, his father and mother and
other members of the family, 1t has also
hundreds of unnamed graves, for half
thousand years before the Carlyle line
had crossed the order in Scotland from
Carlisle with the adherents of returning
King David H., it was the site of a then
ancient church called Ecclesie S. Fec
hani, or the Church of St.Fechan. Fechan
was an Irish abbot of the seventh century
from Iona, who was canonized, mis- day be-
ing Jan. Hence the curious name of
Ecclefechan
Border war brought the ancient church
to ruin. The spirit of the covenanters'
time etfaced what remained. But the
churchyard of Thousand years ago is
Ecclefechan's graveyard of to-day; and
all the stern descendants of those who
Swore to "endeaVor the eXtirpation of
popery, prelacy, superstition, heresy,
schism, profaneness, etc, who have de-
parted life in little Ecclefechan, are lying
here in 'consecrated ground" In Car
lyle's boyhood time there were many of
hand-loom weavers here. Their stone
cottages stood along the highway inter-
spersed with a few shops and
inns. The cottages remain,
housing folk of the same social
order, comfortable laborers among
the surrounding farms. At least three of
the inns are still standing. Two have
been transformed into humble habita-
x,
low rambling structure jutting out sinto
the highway invitingly, and presided over
by brisk, bonnie landlady, Mistress Kill
gour, who is not afraid to tell you that
she has no love for ''Yonkee" pilgrims
and their sneering ways-contains most
of the life of the sleepy hamlet; and,
with ministering to cycles on their north
ern tours, modern coaching parties and
occasional pilgrims to Carlyle's birthplace
and grave, is almost as breezy and bust
ling as in the times of the packers and
carriers, when the olden post coaches
changed their steaming horses, after the
dash from Gretna, before its hospitable
door.
So this was the spot and these the
physical surroundings of Thomas Carlyle
from his birth in 1895, until his stone
mason father, James Carlyle, who cham
mered ON at Ecclefechan, making in his
best year 4l00," removed to the bleak
farmstead of Mainhill, near Lockerbie,
about ten miles north of his native ham
let, and still alongside the old Carlisle
and Glasgow post road. This comprised
the first fourteen years of his life. Dur
ing this time all the boyhood, boyhood
home and home surroundings he ever
knew were his for he had already felt
the terrors of schOolboy life at Amman
and just after the family removal to
Mainhill he was sent away TO Edinburgh
to the university, walking the whole
distance, through, MOffat, in company
with a senior student in the university
named Tom Small
There are none living here or here
about now who knew Thomas Carlyle as
a boy; but found very many old, old folk
whose parents were his youthful COM
panions, or his parents "neebors," and
who, on account of Carlyle's subsequent
fame, left clear testimony with their chill
dren. from their standpoint of view of
his home surroundings and bOyhood life.
1t is all grim, gray picture set IN for
bidding shadows, with but one bright,
clear ray streaming through it-a brave,
loyal mothers endless care and love; of a
home so little and mean that no room in
it permitted the family meals to be eaten
by all its members at once; which forced
young Carlyle to carry forth his food of
bread crumbs boiled in milk to be eaten on
the looping of the WALL" while the lad
gazed at the distant mountains; of IA
Their irascible as honest, unreasonable as
sturdy, miserable as pious in the dim old
stcely way; of a mother, with all her
great virtue, a pestilence of fire and
sword against all intellectual unfolding
not in accord with her own almost saw
agely exactlng creed; and of social and in
tellectual environment in which there
were more melancholy, hopeless serious
ness, petty caviling, downright hatred
and far less brightness and sentiment
than about the olden campfires of the
American Chippewas or Sioux.
1t is plain that the Carlyles were not
only not beloved, but that they were dis
liked with that brutal sort of rancor COM
mon in ignorant neighborhoods The
father was the best workman in the COM
munity. Had he not possessed a furious
temper and hard fist, he would have
was feared, rather than liked or re
spected. The mother was held by her
guidwife neighbors to be o'ersaintly and
''o'er-asperans,n or pompOus in manner
and language, as well at 'muckle auld-
mould, 4" or sagacious and crafty in dis
course The imperious Obstinacy of the
father, so marked a characteristic of the
son, rather than just pride in intelligence
for its own sake, determined him on
making the boy a scholar; and this again
widened the breach between the stone
masons family and the carping villagers.
The latter stood in awe of his fists,
but stuug the brave wife's spirit
wofully with their crafty gossip and
raillery The hurt was double upon the
boys defenseless head. The parents in
their prayers, illustrated TO the lad what
debt of gratitude was being piled up
against him by the Almighty that he was
permitted to live, and by themselves that
they had sustained cOntumely and sacri-
fee TO give him those mighty advantages: