d with delight the kingfisher, and loved
to distinguish the voices of the different birds.

But his parents objecting to the tobacconist's trade, he was apprenticed
about his ninth year to a shoemaker,--a violent, disreputable character,
who made ruthless war upon the lad's birds and reptiles, searching his
pockets for them, and killing them whenever found. The lad bore this
misery for three years, and then his patience being exhausted, and
having in his pocket the sum of seven pence, he ran away and walked a
hundred miles into the country to the house of one of his uncles. His
uncle received him kindly, entertained him a day or two, and gave him
eighteen pence, upon which the boy returned home, and made a bargain
with his master by which he received small wages and had complete
control of his leisure time. At eighteen we may regard him as fairly
launched upon life, a journeyman shoemaker, able to earn in good times
nine shillings a week by laboring from six in the morning till nine at
night. At that time all mechanics worked more hours than they do at
present, and particularly shoemakers, whose sedentary occupation does
not expend vitality so rapidly as out-of-door trades. And what made his
case the more difficult was, he was a thorough-going Scotchman, and
consequently a strict observer of Sunday. Confined though he was to his
work fifteen hours a day, he abstained on principle from pursuing his
natural studies on the only day he could call his own.

He was a night-bird, this Thomas Edward; and as in Scotland the twilight
lasts till ten in the evening and the day dawns at three in the morning,
there were some hours out of the twenty-four which he could employ, and
did employ, in his rambles. At twenty-three he fell in love with a
pretty girl, and married her, his income being still but nine and
sixpence a week. His married life was a happy one, for his wife had the
good sense to make no opposition to his darling pursuits, and let him
fill their cottage and garden with as many creatures as he chose, not
even scolding him for his very frequent absences during the night. Some
one asked her recently about this, and her reply was:--

"Weel, he took such an interest in beasts that I didna compleen.
Shoemakers were then a very drucken set, but his beasts keepit him frae
them. My mon's been a sober mon all his life, and he never negleckit his
wark. Sae I let him be."--

Children were born to them, eleven in all, and yet he