CHAPTER I. 



OFFER OF A SITUATION RESOLVES TO ACCEPT IT SAILS FOR 



EDINBURGH INTERCOURSE WITH SIR THOMAS .B LAUDER 



LINLITHGOW. 



MANY as are the happy circumstances which we 

 have noted in Hugh Miller's life, it is to be re- 

 membered that, at the age of thirty-two, he still finds 

 himself a stone-mason ; and that he is ardently attached 

 to a lady, whom he has inflexibly resolved not to marry 

 while he continues to earn his bread by the labour of his 

 hands. The scheme of emigration to America, almost 

 insuperable as were his objections to it, begins to be 

 again entertained. ' My mother/ says Mrs Miller, ' had 

 at length agreed, if nothing suitable turned up, to give 

 us three hundred pounds of mine, of which she had the 

 life -interest ; and with this sum we were to face the 

 great wilderness/ Such is Hugh's outlook towards the 

 end of 1834 ; the final decision on the question of emi- 

 gration being, I suppose, deferred until the volume of 

 Traditions, of which we have heard so much, and 

 which is now getting actually into the printer's hands, 

 shall have seen the light. 



One morning he sits down, by invitation, to break- 

 fast with Mr Robert Ross, just appointed agent of the 

 Commercial Bank in Cromarty. Mr Ross is a warm 



