I have not much to say about my father's education. For the most part he was his own schoolmaster. I have heard him say that his mother taught him his A B C, and that he afterward learned to read at Mammy Smith's. This old lady kept a school for boys and girls at the top of a house in the Grassmarket. There my father was taught to read his Bible and to learn his Carritch (the Shorter Catechism).
My father's profession was that of a portrait-painter, to begin with; but later he devoted himself to landscape-painting. But he did not confine himself to this pursuit. He was an all-round man, with something of the universal about him. He was a painter, an architect, and a mechanic. Above all, he was an incessantly industrious man.
I was born on the morning of the 19th of August, 1808, at my father's house in Edinburgh. I was named James Hall, after a dear friend of my father. My mother afterward told me that I must have been a "very noticin' bairn," as she observed me, when I was only a few days old, following with my little eyes any one who happened to be in the room, as if I had been thinking to my little self, "Who are you?"
When I was about four or five years old I was observed to give a decided preference to the use of my left hand. At first everything was done to prevent my using it in preference to the right, until my father, after viewing a little sketch I had drawn with my left hand, allowed me to go on in my own way. I used my right hand in all that was necessary, and my left in all sorts of practical manipulative affairs. My left hand has accordingly been my most willing and obedient servant, and in this way I became ambidexter.
In due time I was sent to school; and while attending the High School, from 1817 to 1820, there was the usual rage among boys for spinning-tops, "peeries," and "young cannon." By means of my father's excellent foot-lathe I turned out the spinning-tops in capital style, so much so that I became quite noted among my school companions. They all wanted to have specimens of my productions. They would give any price for them. The peeries were turned with perfect accuracy, and the steel-shod or spinning pivot was centred so as to correspond with the heaviest diameter at the top. They would spin twice as long as the bought peeries. When at full speed they would "sleep;" that is, turn round without a particle of wavering. This was considered high art as regarded top-spinning.