hts to take the place of the primitive coal fires
before in use, he was dubbed engineer to the newly-formed Board of
Northern Lighthouses. Not only were his fortunes bettered by the
appointment, but he was introduced to a new and wider field for the
exercise of his abilities, and a new way of life highly agreeable to his
active constitution. He seems to have rejoiced in the long journeys, and
to have combined them with the practice of field sports. "A tall, stout
man coming ashore with his gun over his arm"--so he was described to my
father--the only description that has come down to me--by a light-keeper
old in the service. Nor did this change come alone. On the 9th July of
the same year, Thomas Smith had been left for the second time a
widower. As he was still but thirty-three years old, prospering in his
affairs, newly advanced in the world, and encumbered at the time with a
family of children, five in number, it was natural that he should
entertain the notion of another wife. Expeditious in business, he was no
less so in his choice; and it was not later than June 1787--for my
grandfather is described as still in his fifteenth year--that he married
the widow of Alan Stevenson.

The perilous experiment of bringing together two families for once
succeeded. Mr. Smith's two eldest daughters, Jean and Janet, fervent in
piety, unwearied in kind deeds, were well qualified both to appreciate
and to attract the stepmother; and her son, on the other hand, seems to
have found immediate favour in the eyes of Mr. Smith. It is, perhaps,
easy to exaggerate the ready-made resemblances; the tired woman must
have done much to fashion girls who were under ten; the man, lusty and
opinionated, must have stamped a strong impression on the boy of
fifteen. But the cleavage of the family was too marked, the identity of
character and interest produced between the two men on the one hand, and
the three women on the other, was too complete to have been the result
of influence alone. Particular bonds of union must have pre-existed on
each side. And there is no doubt that the man and the boy met with
common ambitions, and a common bent, to the practice of that which had
not so long before acquired the name of civil engineering.

For the profession which is now so thronged, famous, and influential,
was then a thing of yesterday. My grandfather had an anecdote of
Smeaton, probably learned from John Clerk of Eldin, their common friend.
Smeaton was