So when I'm tellin' ye this is a bonny world do not be thinkin' it's a man who's lived easily always and whose lines have been cast only in pleasant places who is talking with ye.

I've as little patience as any man with those fat, sleek folk who fold their hands and roll their een and speak without knowledge of grief and pain when those who have known both rebel.

But I know that God brings help and I know this much more--that he will not bring it to the man who has not begun to try to help himself, and never fails to bring it to the man who has.
Weel, as I've told ye, it was for twa shillin' a week that I first worked.

I was a strappin' lout of a boy then, fit to work harder than I did, and earn more, and ever and again I'd tell them at some new mill I was past fourteen, and they'd put me to work at full time.

But I could no hide myself awa' from the inspector when he came around, and each time he'd send me back to school and to half time.
It was hard work, and hard living in yon days.