LANGHOLM 



V11I. 



CHAPTEK II. 



LANGHOLM TELFORD LEARNS THE TRADE OF A STONEMASON. 



THE time arrived when young Telford must be put to 

 some regular calling. Was he to be a shepherd like his 

 father and his uncle, or was he to be a farm-labourer, 

 or put apprentice to a trade ? There was not much 

 choice ; but at length it was determined to bind him to 

 a stonemason. In Eskdale that trade was for the most 

 part confined to the building of drystone walls, and there 

 was very little more art employed in it than an ordinarily 

 neat-handed labourer could manage. It was eventually 

 determined to send the youth and he was now a strong 

 lad of about fifteen to a mason at Lochmaben, a small 

 town across the hills to the eastward, where a little more 

 building and of a better sort such as farm-houses, barns, 

 and road-bridges was carried on, than in his own im- 

 mediate neighbourhood. There he remained only a 

 few months ; for his master using him badly, the high- 

 spirited youth would not brook it, and ran away, taking 

 refuge with his mother at The Crooks, very much to her 

 dismay. 



What was now to be done with Tarn ? He was willing 

 to do anything or go anywhere rather than back to 

 his Lochmaben master. In this emergency his cousin 

 Thomas Jackson, the factor or land-steward at Wester 

 Hall, offered to do what he could to induce Andrew 

 Thomson, a small mason at Langholm, to take Telford for 

 the remainder of his apprenticeship ; and to him he went 

 accordingly. The business carried on by his new master 

 was of a very humble sort. Telford, in his autobiography, 



