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TELFORD A WORKING MASON IN LONDON. PART VIII. 



that line. 1 Diligence, carefulness, and observation will 

 always carry a man onward and upward; and before 

 long we find that Telford had succeeded in advancing 

 himself to the rank of a first-class mason. Judging 

 by his letters written about this time to his friends 

 in Eskdale, he seems to have been very cheerful and 

 happy ; and his greatest pleasure was in calling up 

 recollections of his native valley. He was full of kind 

 remembrances for everybody. " How is Andrew, and 

 Sandy, and Aleck, and Davie ? " he would say ; and 

 " remember me to all the folk of the nook." He seems 

 to have made a round of the persons from Eskdale in or 

 about London before he wrote, as his letters were full 

 of messages from them to their friends at home ; for in 

 those days postage was dear, and as much as possible was 

 necessarily packed within the compass of a working man's 

 letter. In one, written after more than a year's ab- 

 sence, he says he envies the visit which a young surgeon 

 of his acquaintance was about to pay to the valley ; 

 " for the meeting of long absent friends," he adds, " is 

 a pleasure to be equalled by few other enjoyments here 

 below." 



He had now been more than a year in London, 

 during which he had acquired much practical information 

 both in the useful and ornamental branches of architec- 

 ture. Was he to go on as a working mason ? or what 

 was to be his next move ? He had been quietly making 

 his observations upon his companions, and had come 

 to the conclusion that they very much wanted spirit, 

 and, more than all, fore-thought. He found very 

 clever workmen about him with no idea whatever 

 beyond their week's wages. For these they would 



1 Long after Telford had become 

 famous, he was passing over Water- 

 loo Bridge one day with a friend, 

 when, pointing to some finely-cut 

 stones in the corner nearest the bridge, 



he said : " You see those stones there ; 

 forty years since I hewed and laid 

 them, when working on that building 

 as a common mason." 



