better now, could I but find it.

It was but twa years we stayed at Arboath. From there we went to
Hamilton, on the west coast, since my uncle told of the plenty work
there was to be found there at the coal mines. I went on at the
pitheads, and, after a week or so, a miner gave me a chance to go
below with him. He was to pay me ten shillings for a week's work as
his helper, and it was proud I was the morn when I went doon into the
blackness for the first time.

But I was no so old, ye'll be mindin', and I won't say I was not
fearsome, too. It's a queer feelin' ye have when ye first go doon into
a pit. The sun's gone, and the light, and it seems like the air's gone
from your lungs with them. I carried a gauze lamp, but the bit flicker
of it was worse than useless--it made it harder for me to see, instead
of easier. The pressure's what ye feel; it's like to be chokin' ye
until you're used to it. And then the black, damp walls, pressin' in,
as if they were great hands aching to be at your throat! Oh, I'm
tellin' ye there's lots of things pleasanter than goin' doon into a
coal pit for the first time.

I mind, since then, I've gone doon far deeper than ever we did at
Hamilton. At Butte, in Montana, in America, I went doon three thousand
feet--more than half a mile, mind ye! There they find copper, and good
copper, at that depth. But they took me doon there in an express
elevator. I had no time to be afeared before we were doon, walkin'
along a broad, dry gallery, as well lighted as Broadway or the Strand,
with electric lights, and great fans to keep the air cool and dry.
It's different, minin' so, to what it was when I was a boy at
Hamilton.