nk when the walls were
levelled; they were treated to drink when the building was finished;
they were treated to drink when an apprentice joined the squad;
treated to drink when his apron was washed; treated to drink when his
"time was out;" and occasionally they learned to treat one another to
drink. At the first house upon which we were engaged as a slim
apprentice boy, the workmen had a royal founding-pint, and two whole
glasses of whisky came to our share. A full-grown man might not deem a
gill of usquebhae an over-dose, but it was too much for a boy
unaccustomed to strong drink; and when the party broke up, and we got
home to our few books--few, but good, and which we had learned at even
an earlier period to pore over with delight--we found, as we opened
the page of a favourite author, the letters dancing before our eyes,
and that we could no longer master his sense. The state was perhaps a
not very favourable one for forming a resolution in, but we believe
the effort served to sober us. We determined in that hour that never
more would we sacrifice our capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a
drinking usage; and during the fifteen years which we spent as an
operative mason, we held, through God's help, by the determination. We
are not sure whether, save for that determination, we would have had
the honour of a place on this platform to-night. But there are other
kinds of intoxication than that which it is the nature of strong drink
or of drugs to produce. Bacon speaks of a "natural drunkenness." And
the hallucinations of this natural drunkenness must be avoided if you
would prosper. Let us specify one of these. Never let yourselves be
beguiled by the idea that fate has misplaced you in life, and that
were you in some other sphere you would rise. It is true that some men
_are_ greatly misplaced; but to brood over the idea is not the best
way of getting the necessary exchange effected. It is not the way at
all. Often the best policy in the case is just to forget the
misplacement. We remember once deeming ourselves misplaced, when, in a
season of bad health and consequent despondency, we had to work among
labourers in a quarry. But the feeling soon passed, and we set
ourselves carefully to examine the quarry. Cowper describes a prisoner
of the Bastile beguiling his weary hours by counting the nail-studs on
the door of his cell, upwards, downwards, and across,--

"Wearing out time in numbering to and fro,
The