Mr. Pasley also furnished him with a letter to Mr. Robert Adam,*[1] another distinguished architect of the time; and Telford seems to have been much gratified by the civility which he receives from him. Sir William Chambers he found haughty and reserved, probably being too much occupied to bestow attention on the Somerset House hewer, while he found Adam to be affable and communicative. "Although I derived no direct advantage from either," Telford says, "yet so powerful is manner, that the latter left the most favourable impression; while the interviews with both convinced me that my safest plan was to endeavour to advance, if by slower steps, yet by independent conduct." There was a good deal of fine hewer's work about Somerset House, and from the first Telford aimed at taking the highest place as an artist and tradesman in that line.*[2] Diligence, carefulness, and observation will always carry a man onward and upward; and before long we find that Telford had succeeded in advancing himself to the rank of a first-class mason. Judging from his letters written about this time to his friends in Eskdale, he seems to have been very cheerful and happy; and his greatest pleasure was in calling up recollections of his native valley. He was full of kind remembrances for everybody. "How is Andrew, and Sandy, and Aleck, and Davie?" he would say; and "remember me to all the folk of the nook." He seems to have made a round of the persons from Eskdale in or about London before he wrote, as his letters were full of messages from them to their friends at home; for in those days postage was dear, and as much as possible was necessarily packed within the compass of a working man's letter. In one, written after more than a year's absence, he said he envied the visit which a young surgeon of his acquaintance was about to pay to the valley; "for the meeting of long absent friends," he added, "is a pleasure to be equalled by few other enjoyments here below." He had now been more than a year in London, during which he had acquired much practical information both in the useful and ornamental branches of architecture. Was he to go on as a working mason? or what was to be his next move? He had been quietly making his observations upon his companions, and had come to the conclusion that they very much wanted spirit, and, more than all, forethought. He found very clever workmen about him with no idea whatever beyond their week's wages. For these they would make every effort: they would work hard, exert themselves to keep their earnings up to the highest point, and very readily "strike" to secure an advance; but as for making a provision for the next week, or the next year, he thought them exceedingly thoughtless. On the Monday mornings they began "clean;" and on Saturdays their week's earnings were spent. Thus they lived from one week to another-- their limited notion of "the week" seeming to bound their existence.