Still, however, with all my enjoyments, I had to suffer some of the evils of excessive toil. Though now seventeen, I was still seven inches short of my ultimate stature; and my frame, cast more at the time in the mould of my mother than in that of the robust sailor, whose "back," according to the description of one of his comrades, "no one had ever put to the ground," was slim and loosely knit; and I used to suffer much from wandering pains in the joints, and an oppressive feeling about the chest, as if crushed by some great weight. I became subject, too, to frequent fits of extreme depression of spirits, which took almost the form of a walking sleep--results, I believe, of excessive fatigue--and during which my absence of mind was so extreme, that I lacked the ability of protecting myself against accident, in cases the most simple and ordinary. Besides other injuries, I lost at different times during the first few months of my apprenticeship, when in these fits of partial somnambulism, no fewer than seven of my finger-nails. But as I gathered strength, my spirits became more equable; and not until many years after, when my health failed for a time under over-exertion of another kind, had I any renewed experience of the fits of walking sleep. My master, an elderly man at the time--for, as he used not unfrequently to tell his apprentices, he had been born on the same day and year as George the Fourth, and so we could celebrate, if we pleased, both birthdays together--was a person of plodding, persevering industry, who wrought rather longer hours than was quite agreeable to one who wished to have some time to himself; but he was, in the main, a good master. As a builder, he made conscience of every stone he laid. It was remarked in the place, that the walls built by Uncle David never bulged or fell; and no apprentice or journeyman of his was permitted, on any plea, to make "slight wark." Though by no means a bold or daring man, he was, from sheer abstraction, when engrossed in his employment, more thoroughly insensible to personal danger than almost any other individual I ever knew. On one occasion, when an overloaded boat, in which he was carrying stones from the quarry to the neighbouring town, was overtaken by a series of rippling seas, and suddenly sank, leaving him standing on one of the thwarts submerged to the throat, he merely said to his partner, on seeing his favourite snuff-mull go floating past, "Od, Andro man, just rax out your han' and tak' in my snuff-box." On another, when a huge mass of the boulder clay came toppling down upon us in the quarry with such momentum, that it bent a massive iron lever like a bow, and crushed into minute fragments a strong wheelbarrow, Uncle David, who, older and less active than any of the others, had been entangled in the formidable debris, relieved all our minds by remarking, as we rushed back, expecting to find him crushed as flat as a botanical preparation,