nd
crushed into minute fragments a strong wheelbarrow, Uncle David, who,
older and less active than any of the others, had been entangled in the
formidable debris, relieved all our minds by remarking, as we rushed
back, expecting to find him crushed as flat as a botanical preparation,
"Od, I draid, Andro man, we have lost our good barrow." He was at first
of opinion that I would do him little credit as a workman: in my absent
fits I was well-nigh as impervious to instruction as he himself was
insensible to danger; and I laboured under the further disadvantage of
knowing a little, as an amateur, of both hewing and building, from the
circumstance, that when the undertakings of my schoolboy days involved,
as they sometimes did, the erection of a house, I used always to be
selected as the mason of the party. And all that I had learned on these
occasions I had now to unlearn. In the course of a few months, however,
I did unlearn it all; and then, acquiring in less than a fortnight a
very considerable mastery over the mallet--for mine was one of the not
unfrequent cases in which the mechanical knock seems, after many an
abortive attempt, to be caught up at once--I astonished Uncle David one
morning by setting myself to compete with him, and by hewing nearly two
feet of pavement for his one. And on this occasion my aunt, his wife,
who had been no stranger to his previous complaints, was informed that
her "stupid nephew" was to turn out "a grand workman after all."

A life of toil has, however, its peculiar temptations. When overwrought,
and in my depressed moods, I learned to regard the ardent spirits of the
dram-shop as high luxuries: they gave lightness and energy to both body
and mind, and substituted for a state of dulness and gloom, one of
exhilaration and enjoyment. Usquebaugh was simply happiness doled out by
the glass, and sold by the gill. The drinking usages of the profession
in which I laboured were at this time many: when a foundation was laid,
the workmen were treated to drink; they were treated to drink when the
walls were levelled for laying the joists; they were treated to drink
when the building was finished; they were treated to drink when an
apprentice joined the squad; treated to drink when his "apron was
washed;" treated to drink when "his time was out;" and occasionally they
learned to treat one another to drink. In laying down the
foundation-stone of one of the larger houses built this year by Uncle
Davi