My prospect of succeeding to the object on which I had placed my affections were at the time but slender, but having somewhere read that if one did but set his eye on any thing in reason, and pursued it steadily, he would finally attain it, I resolved to adhere to such an animating maxim, and fixing my heart on a captain's commission, I pursued it steadily, and for the encouragement of youth in all times to come, I am proud to record that I finally did attain it. I returned to the country on the expiration of my apprenticeship, which (considering the object I had in view) happened at a most auspicious moment; for the ensign of our parochial company of local militia had just received a commission in the line, and I was fortunate enough to step into his vacated commission as well as into his clothing and appointments. I had by that time grown into a tall ramrod of a fellow, as fat as a whipping-post--my predecessor had been a head and shoulders shorter, so that in marching into his trousers I was obliged to put my legs so far through them that it required the eye of a _connoisseur_ to distinguish whether they were not intended as a pair of breeches. The other end of my arms, too, were exposed to equal animadversion, protruding through the coat-sleeves to an extent which would have required a pair of gauntlets of the horse-guards blue to fill up the vacancy. Nevertheless, no peacock ever strutted more proudly in his plumage than I did in mine--and when I found myself on a Sunday in the front seat of the gallery of our parish church, exposed to the admiration of a congregation of milk-maids, my delight was without alloy. CHAP. II. "No man can tether time or tide, The hour approaches Tam maun ride." And he takes one side step and two front ones on the road to glory. It was a very fine thing, no doubt, to be an ensign in the local militia, and a remarkably pretty thing to be the admiration of all the milk-maids of a parish, but while time was jogging, I found myself standing with nothing but the precarious footing of those pleasures to stand upon, and it therefore behoved me to think of sinking the ornamental for the sake of the useful; and a neighbouring worthy, who was an importer and vender of foreign timber, happening at this time to make a proposition to unite our fortunes, and that I should take the charge of a branch establishment in the city of Glasgow, it was arranged accordingly, and my next position therefore was behind my own desk in that Wapping of Glasgow, called the Gorbals.