END OF APPRENTICESHIP. 83 



a field of narrow boundaries. I could see at one glance 

 both over it and beyond it; I have found that the 

 grotesque cottage of a Highland peasant, the hut of a 

 herd-boy, a cavern half veiled over with trailing plants, 

 an opening in a wood, in short, a countless variety 

 of objects of art and nature supplied me with ideas 

 which though connected with it, had not become part 

 of it/ 



From mathematics, therefore, as previously from 

 classics, Hugh Miller turned aside. The circumstance 

 is perhaps to be regretted, and yet with the former 

 reservation, that any severe and systematic course of 

 study would have interfered with that natural and 

 spontaneous development which made him what he was. 

 His apprenticeship had begun with trying experi- 

 ences, and its termination was marked also by extremity 

 of hardship. In the September of this year, 1822, his 

 master obtained work as a contractor on a farm a few 

 miles from Cromarty, and he and Miller bade adieu to 

 Conon-side. A wall was to be built and a farmsteading 

 to be repaired, and as the season was advanced and 

 David Wright could afford to employ no labour in ad- 

 dition to his own and that of his apprentice, Miller and 

 he worked from dawn until night-fall. Their work was 

 of the most painful kind ; ' day after day with wet feet 

 in a water-logged ditch/ laying stone upon stone until 

 the cuticle was worn away and the fingers oozed blood. 

 In the Schools and Schoolmasters, Miller describes the 

 labour of this time as ' torture/ ' How these poor hands 

 of mine/ he says, ' burnt and beat at night at this time, 

 as if an unhappy heart had been stationed in every 

 finger ! and what cold chills used to run, sudden 

 as electric shocks, through the feverish frame ! ' His 

 health was affected; a dull, depressing pain weighed 



