David's mother

David's mother had a great store of family traditions, and, like the mother of Sir Walter Scott, she retained the power of telling them with the utmost accuracy to a very old age. In one of Livingstone's private journals, written in 1864, during his second visit home, he gives at full length the above-mentioned story, which some future Macaulay may find useful as an illustration of the social conditions of Scotland in the early part of the eighteenth century.