HUGH MILLER 31 



become a mason was allowed by his uncles. However, 

 at last, there being another uncle on the mother's side 

 who was a mason contracting for small jobs, and who 

 employed an apprentice or two, he was bound apprentice 

 for three years, from February 1820 to November 1822 

 and entered on the trade of mason and quarryman, for 

 in the North the combination was constant. Long after, 

 in the Old Red Sandstone he has described his first day's 

 experience in the sandstone quarry, when, in that early 

 spring morning and with a heavy heart, he set out to 

 experience his first battle in the stern school of the 

 world : 



* I was but a slim, loose-jointed boy at the time, fond of 

 the pretty intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when 

 broad awake ; and, woful change ! I was now going to 

 work at what Burns has instanced in his Twa Dogs as one 

 of the most disagreeable of all employments. Bating the 

 passing uneasiness occasioned by a few gloomy anticipa- 

 tions, the portion of my life which had already gone by had 

 been happy beyond the common lot. I had been a wan- 

 derer among rocks and woods a reader of curious books 

 when I could get them a gleaner of old traditional stories ; 

 and now I was going to exchange all my day-dreams and 

 all my amusements for the kind of life in which men toil 

 every day that they may be enabled to eat, and eat every 

 day that they may be enabled to toil. The quarry in which 

 I wrought lay on the southern shore of a noble inland bay, 

 or firth rather (the Bay of Cromarty), with a little clear 

 stream on the one side and a thick fir wood on the other. 

 It had been opened in the Old Red Sandstone of the dis 



