one. The fact was, I knew and had heard so
much good of this poor man, that I greatly
desired not only an opportunity to do him a
real service, but to hear from his own lips, when
he was sober, the story of his life, his struggles,
his temptations, and his hopes—if he had any.

He came the next morning at eight o'clock,
according to appointment, ragged as usual, but
with clean hands and face, and a light in his
clear blue eyes, that seemed to show that the
fumes of liquor in his brain were very volatile,
and passed away quicker than is common with
most people. I asked him if he were ready for
a walk of a dozen miles, to a town to which
we might easily have gone by rail had it suited
my fancy. He expressed himself in the affirmative,
though he said he should first of all like
to have his breakfast. This I provided for
him, not in money but in kind, for fear of
accidents. The day was lovely, neither too
hot nor too cold, and when, after twenty
minutes' walk, we got clear of the streets, the
beauty of the autumnal tints upon the trees,
the greenness of the grass, the transparent
blueness of the cloudless sky, the warmth of
the sunshine, and the joyous freshness of the
breeze, seemed to affect my ragged companion
as I know they affected me, with a sense of
physical enjoyment, and of gratitude to Heaven
for the blessed gift of life. I soon engaged
him in a conversation which gradually assumed,
on his part, an autobiographical shape—the
very shape that pleased me most—and told me
the story of his life from his youth upwards.
He was the son of a poor weaver in the
West of Scotland, and was put to work at his
father's trade at the tender age of eight years.
Before that time he had learned to read at a
little school kept by an old woman in the
village, and being naturally quick, he had
already stored his infant mind with fairy
legends, stories of adventure, and snatches of
verse. The hours of labour, at that time, in
factory work were from six in the morning
until eight in the evening, with two intervals
for meals, half an hour for breakfast and an
hour for dinner. The overseer of the factory
seeing the child engaged in reading during the
dinner hour, and being surprised, on questioning
him, to find the eager desire of knowledge
that had taken possession of him, not only
allowed him an additional couple of hours every
day to attend a school, without making any
deduction from his wages, but very generously
paid for his schooling. By the time he was
fifteen years of age, he had obtained considerable
proficiency in English composition, a competent
acquaintance with the rules of arithmetic,
had studied Greek, Roman, and English history,
together with geography, and knew something
—but not much—of Latin. He also began to
revel in the writings of Robert Burns, and to
awake to the consciousness that he, too,
vehemently desired to become a poet. Like Burns,
too, his first rhymes welled from his heart in
admiration of the beauty of a young girl in
his own sphere of life. Precocious in his
physical as well as in his mental powers, he
fell desperately in love before he was sixteen,
and before he was seventeen, he was married
to the girl of his first choice—like himself, a
mill-worker. Between them both they earned
about fourteen shillings a week, and on this
slender pittance they commenced the hard
battle of the world. The young man, as he
grew older, discovered that he was a wit and
a politician as well as a weaver and a poet,
and at the time of the first Reform agitation he
took the Radical side, and let off in the local
newspapers of the neighbouring city, a series
of squibs and crackers against the boroughmongers,
as they were called, which excited
much attention, and led to many inquiries for
the author. He, on his part, was by no means
unwilling to declare himself, and to receive
such homage and pay as his effusions
commanded—the homage considerable, the pay
very scanty. Unthinking people, surprised to
find such talents in a poor weaver, patronised
him in their good-natured but blundering way;
brought him into the society of his betters—
better only in point of worldly position—and
invited him to their convivial whisky parties.

"Many a time," said he, "when I would
have been better pleased with a shilling in hard
cash, I have drunk, at other people's expense,
five shillings' worth of wine and whisky, and
have been brought out, I feel it now, in the
strength of my intellect, my form, and my
sense of wit and humour, to make sport for
these brainless but good-hearted Philistines,
who enjoyed my conversation, and had very
little of their own. I must own that I liked
this kind of thing. I felt a sense of power and
supremacy. I was a Triton among the
minnows. My appetite grew by what it fed on.
I knew myself to be the intellectual superior of
the people who plied me with liquor to get the
wit out of me, yet I did not despise them, or
shun their society. On the contrary, I felt ill
at ease with myself and with the world, if by
an accident, I were not invited to any of their
social 'cracks.' Off and on, I led this kind of
life—being still a mill-hand, and gaining an
occasional guinea for a poem—save the mark!
when one of my comrades, the managing clerk
in a lawyer's office, gave me the opportunity of
an introduction to the editor of a liberal paper
in the city, by bringing him to one of our
symposia. He appeared to be as pleased with
me as I was with him, and offered me a situation
on his paper, partly as a collector of local
news and paragraphs, and partly as a corrector
of proofs, in which art and mystery I soon
became tolerably expert. This was a great rise
in the world for me, for I had a salary of two
guineas a week (more than double the joint
earnings of myself and wife), and I was thus
enabled to take her out of the mill, and give
her freedom to attend to the children. I was
twenty-one years old at this time, and had
three children, and the prospect of a fourth.
But my old love of good-fellowship, and my
power of repartee, and the knack of saying
things that were either good in themselves, or
that seemed good to those who heard them,
especially when spiced with a little savagery or
cynicism—which I never really felt in my