But it was not without reluctance that his resolve to become a mason
was allowed by his uncles. However, at last, there being another uncle
on the mother's side who was a mason contracting for small jobs, and
who employed an apprentice or two, he was bound apprentice for three
years, from February 1820 to November 1822 and entered on the trade of
mason and quarryman, for in the North the combination was constant.
Long after, in the _Old Red Sandstone_ he has described his first day's
experience in the sandstone quarry, when, in that early spring morning
and with a heavy heart, he set out to experience his first battle in
the stern school of the world:
'I was but a slim, loose-jointed boy at the time, fond of the
pretty intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad
awake; and, woful change! I was now going to work at what Burns has
instanced in his _Twa Dogs_ as one of the most disagreeable of all
employments. Bating the passing uneasiness occasioned by a few
gloomy anticipations, the portion of my life which had already gone
by had been happy beyond the common lot. I had been a wanderer
among rocks and woods--a reader of curious books when I could get
them--a gleaner of old traditional stories; and now I was going to
exchange all my day-dreams and all my amusements for the kind of
life in which men toil every day that they may be enabled to eat,
and eat every day that they may be enabled to toil. The quarry in
which I wrought lay on the southern shore of a noble inland bay, or
firth rather (the Bay of Cromarty), with a little clear stream on
the one side and a thick fir wood on the other. It had been opened
in the Old Red Sandstone of the district, and was overtopped by a
huge bank of diluvial clay, and which rose over it in some places
to the height of nearly thirty feet.'