Writing to his friend, Miss Malcolm, respecting a young man who desired to enter the engineering profession, he in the first place endeavoured to dissuade the lady from encouraging the ambition of her protege, the profession being overstocked, and offering very few prizes in proportion to the large number of blanks. "But," he added, "if civil engineering, notwithstanding these discouragements, is still preferred, I may point out that the way in which both Mr. Rennie and myself proceeded, was to serve a regular apprenticeship to some practical employment--he to a millwright, and I to a general house-builder. In this way we secured the means, by hard labour, of earning a subsistence; and, in time, we obtained by good conduct the confidence of our employers and the public; eventually rising into the rank of what is called Civil Engineering. This is the true way of acquiring practical skill, a thorough knowledge of the materials employed in construction, and last, but not least, a perfect knowledge of the habits and dispositions of the workmen who carry out our designs. This course, although forbidding to many a young person, who believes it possible to find a short and rapid path to distinction, is proved to be otherwise by the two examples I have cited. For my own part, I may truly aver that 'steep is the ascent, and slippery is the way.'"*[6] That Mr. Telford was enabled to continue to so advanced an age employed on laborious and anxious work, was no doubt attributable in a great measure to the cheerfulness of his nature. He was, indeed, a most happy-minded man. It will be remembered that, when a boy, he had been known in his valley as "Laughing Tam." The same disposition continued to characterise him in his old age. He was playful and jocular, and rejoiced in the society of children and young people, especially when well-informed and modest. But when they pretended to acquirements they did not possess, he was quick to detect and see through them. One day a youth expatiated to him in very large terms about a friend of his, who had done this and that, and made so and so, and could do all manner of wonderful things. Telford listened with great attention, and when the youth had done - he quietly asked, with a twinkle in his eye, "Pray, can your friend lay eggs?" When in society he gave himself up to it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. He did not sit apart, a moody and abstracted "lion;" nor desire to be regarded as "the great engineer," pondering new Menai Bridges; But he appeared in his natural character of a simple, intelligent, cheerful companion; as ready to laugh at his own jokes as at other people's; and he was as communicative to a child as to any philosopher of the party.