In One Of The
Flour-Mills The Machinery Seemed As Perfect As In The Biscuit Factory At
Portsmouth - By Some Ingenious Mechanism The Flour Was Cooled, Barrelled,
And Branded With Great Celerity.
At an iron-foundry I was surprised to
find that steam-engines and flour-mill machinery could not be manufactured
fast enough to meet the demand.
In this neighbourhood I heard rather an
interesting anecdote of what steady perseverance can do, in the history of
a Scot from the shores of the Forth.
This young man was a pauper boy, and was apprenticed to the master of an
iron-foundry in Scotland, but ran away before the expiration of his
apprenticeship, and, entering a ship at Glasgow, worked his passage across
to Quebec. Here he gained employment for some months as a porter, and,
having saved a little money, went up to the neighbourhood of Lake Simcoe,
where he became a day labourer. Here he fell in love with his master's
daughter, who returned his affection, but her father scornfully rejected
the humble Scotchman's suit. Love but added an incentive to ambition; and
obtaining work in a neighbouring township, he increased his income by
teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic in the evenings. He lived
penuriously, denied himself even necessaries, and carefully treasured his
hoarded savings. Late one evening, clothed almost in rags, he sought the
house of his lady-love, and told her that within two years he would come
to claim her hand of her father, with a waggon and pair of horses.
Still in his ragged clothing, for it does not appear that he had any
other, he trudged to Toronto, and sought employment, his accumulated
savings sewn up in the lining of his waistcoat. He went about from person
to person, but could not obtain employment, and his waggon and horses
receded further and further in the dim perspective. One day, while walking
along at the unfinished end of King Street West, he saw something
glittering in the mud, and, on taking it up, found it to be the steel snap
of a pocket-book. This pocket-book contained notes to the amount of one
hundred and fifty dollars; and the next day a reward of five-and-twenty
was offered to the finder of them. The Scotchman waited on the owner, who
was a tool manufacturer, and, declining the reward, asked only for work,
for "leave to toil," as Burns has expressed it. This was granted him; and
in less than four months he became a clerk in the establishment. His
salary was gradually raised - in the evenings he obtained employment in
writing for a lawyer, and his savings, judiciously managed, increased to
such an extent, that at the end of eighteen months he purchased a thriving
farm in the neighbourhood of London, and, as there was water-power upon
it, he built a grist-mill. His industry still continued successful, and
just before the two years expired he drove in a light waggon, with two
hardy Canadian horses, to the dwelling of his former master, to claim his
daughter's hand; though, be it remembered, he had never held any
communication with her since he parted from her in rags two years before.
At first they did not recognise the vagrant, ragged Scotch labourer, in
the well-dressed driver and possessor of the "knowing-looking" equipage.
His altered circumstances removed all difficulty on the father's part - the
maiden had been constant - and soon afterwards they were married.
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