"Five years of this imprisonment and then he was eighteen and his own master; and the first thing he did was to descend from the loom, take a pack of cloth upon his shoulders and go wandering away from the hills and valleys and lakes of Scotland--free at last like a young deer in the heather. He said of himself that from that hour when his eyes had first opened on the light of grey Scotch mountains, the world of nature had called him. He did not yet know what the forest and the life of the forest meant or would ever mean; he only knew that there he was happy and at home. "Thus, like Silas Marner, he became a poor weaver and peddler but not with Silas Marner's eyes. Seldom in any human head has the mechanism of vision been driven by a mind with such power and eagerness to observe. And he had the special memory of the eye. There are those of us who have the special memory of the ear or of taste or of touch. He had the long, faithful recollection of things seen. With this pair of eyes during the next several years he traversed on foot three-fourths of Scotland. Remember, you boys of the rolling bluegrass plateau, what the scenery of Scotland is! Think what it meant to traverse three-fourths of that country, you who consider it a hardship to walk five level miles, a misfortune to be obliged to walk ten, the adventure of a lifetime to walk twenty. "But though he followed one after another well nigh all the roads of Scotland, he could find in all Scotland no road of life for him. It is true that certain misleading paths beckoned to him, as is apt to be true in every life. Thus he had conceived a great desire to weave poetry instead of cloth, to weave music instead of listening to the noise of the loom: he had his flute and his violin. But what he accomplished with poetry and flute and violin were obstacles to his necessary work and rendered this harder. The time he gave to them made his work less: the less his work, the less his living; the less his living, the more his troubles and hardships. "Once he started out both to peddle his wares and to solicit orders for a little book of his poems he wished to publish. To help both pack and poetry he wrote a handbill in verse. Some of the lines ran thus: "'Here's handkerchiefs charming, book muslins like ermine, Brocaded, striped, corded, or checked. Sweet Venus, they say, on Cupid's birthday In British-made muslin was decked. "'Now, ye Fair, if you choose any piece to peruse, With pleasure I'll instantly show it. If the peddler should fail to be favoured with sale, Then I hope you'll encourage the poet.' "The result seems to have been but small sale for British-made muslins and no sale at all for Wilson-made poems.