THE JOURNEYMAN'S FIRST FREEDOM. 53 



the low road that ran through the Hardgate, and crossed 

 the Den Burn near its mouth at the harbour. Long years 

 after, he used to recall, with a kind of melancholy pleasure, 

 the old condition of things, more than half a century 

 before, remarking that, " like himseP," all sublunary things 

 must change. 



Besides a desire to see the world, one of John's reasons 

 for coming to Aberdeen was to perfect himself as a weaver. 

 As he afterwards told me, he made up his mind when 

 he became a weaver to be one, and to master the whole 

 subject ; and he was the man to do it. Aberdeen was 

 even then the seat of a great manufacturing trade in 

 cotton, linen, and wool, carried on in numerous large 

 factories, which employed, at that time, more than three 

 thousand hands, out of a population, in 1821, of under forty- 

 four thousand a very large proportion of the adults. The 

 weavers then formed a powerful corporation in the city, 

 and wielded great influence. They could be seen, as in 

 Drumlithie, standing in the streets in wordy confabulation, 

 arrayed in their clean white aprons, the badge of their 

 trade, of which they were justly proud. 



At first, John entered the large weaving factory of 

 Leys, Masson and Co., who had immense establishments 

 where the busy thoroughfare of Market Street now stands, 

 and at Broadford, then a suburb of Aberdeen, but now 

 enclosed in the city. Their great works, which included 

 a foundry, were considered among the largest of the 

 kind then in Scotland. Here famed linen and cotton 

 cloths of various kinds were produced ; and things were 

 so carefully managed that, as John used to say, they had 

 very little waste in their productions " there wasna 



