homes of these southern Scotch Highlands have come
forth, among a host of scarcely less distinguished natives, three men,
at least, who deserve to take their place in the very front line of
British thinkers or workers--Thomas Telford, Robert Burns, and Thomas
Carlyle. By origin, all three alike belonged in the very strictest
sense to the working classes; and the story of each is full of lessons
or of warnings for every one of us: but that of Telford is perhaps the
most encouraging and the most remarkable of all, as showing how much
may be accomplished by energy and perseverance, even under the most
absolutely adverse and difficult circumstances.

Near the upper end of Eskdale, in the tiny village of Westerkirk, a
young shepherd's wife gave birth to a son on the 9th of August, 1757.
Her husband, John Telford, was employed in tending sheep on a
neighbouring farm, and he and his Janet occupied a small cottage close
by, with mud walls and rudely thatched roof, such as in southern
England even the humblest agricultural labourer would scarcely consent
willingly to inhabit. Before the child was three months old, his
father died; and Janet Telford was left alone in the world with her
unweaned baby. But in remote country districts, neighbours are often
more neighbourly than in great towns; and a poor widow can manage to
eke out a livelihood for herself with an occasional lift from the
helping hands of friendly fellow-villagers. Janet Telford had nothing
to live upon save her own ten fingers; but they were handy enough,
after the sturdy Scotch fashion, and they earned some sort of
livelihood in a humble way for herself and her fatherless boy. The
farmers about found her work on their farms at haymaking or milking,
and their wives took the child home with them while its mother was busy
labouring in the harvest fields. Amid such small beginnings did the
greatest of English engineers before the railway era receive his first
hard lessons in the art of life.

After her husband's death, the poor widow removed from her old cottage
to a still more tiny hut, which she shared with a neighbour--a very
small hut, with a single door for both families; and here young Tam
Telford spent most of his boyhood in the quiet honourable poverty of
the uncomplaining rural poor. As soon as he was big enough to herd
sheep, he was turned out upon the hillside in summer like any other
ragged country laddie, and in winter he tended cows, receiving fo