e him, large
compensation, in the amusements of one-half the year, for the toils of
the other half. Labour shall not wield over me, I said, a rod entirely
black, but a rod like one of Jacob's peeled wands, chequered white and
black alternately.

I however, did look, even at this time, notwithstanding the antecedents
of a sadly mis-spent boyhood, to something higher than mere amusement;
and, daring to believe that literature, and, mayhap, natural science,
were, after all, my proper vocations, I resolved that much of my leisure
time should be given to careful observation, and the study of our best
English authors. Both my uncles, especially James, were sorely vexed by
my determination to be a mason; they had expected to see me rising in
some one of the learned professions; yet here was I going to be a mere
operative mechanic, like one of themselves! I spent with them a serious
hour, in which they urged that, instead of entering as a mason's
apprentice, I should devote myself anew to my education. Though the
labour of their hands formed their only wealth, they would assist me,
they said, in getting through college; nay, if I preferred it, I might
meanwhile come and live with them: all they asked of me in return was
that I should give myself as sedulously to my lessons as, in the event
of my becoming a mason, I would have to give myself to my trade. I
demurred. The lads of my acquaintance, who were preparing for college
had an eye, I said, to some profession; they were qualifying themselves
to be lawyers, or medical men, or, in much larger part, were studying
for the Church; whereas I had no wish, and no peculiar fitness to be
either lawyer or doctor; and as for the Church, that was too serious a
direction to look in for one's bread, unless one could honestly regard
one's-self as _called_ to the Church's proper work; and I could not.
There, said my uncles, you are perfectly right: better be a poor
mason--better be anything honest, however humble--than an _uncalled_
minister. How very strong the hold taken of the mind in some cases by
hereditary convictions of which the ordinary conduct shows little
apparent trace! I had for the last few years been a wild boy--not
without my share of respect for Donald Roy's religion, but possessed of
none of Donald's seriousness; and yet here was his belief in this
special matter lying so strongly entrenched in the recesses of my mind,
that no consideration whatever could have induced me to