Telford is perhaps the most encouraging and the most remarkable of
all, as showing how much may be accomplished by energy and
perseverance, even under the most absolutely adverse and difficult
circumstances.

Near the upper end of Eskdale, in the tiny village of Westerkirk,
a young shepherd's wife gave birth to a son on the 9th of August,
1757. Her husband, John Telford, was employed in tending sheep on
a neighbouring farm, and he and his Janet occupied a small cottage
close by, with mud walls and rudely thatched roof, such as in
southern England even the humblest agricultural labourer would
scarcely consent willingly to inhabit. Before the child was three
months old, his father died; and Janet Telford was left alone in
the world with her unweaned baby. But in remote country districts,
neighbours are often more neighbourly than in great towns; and a
poor widow can manage to eke out a livelihood for herself with an
occasional lift from the helping hands of friendly fellow-
villagers. Janet Telford had nothing to live upon save her own ten
fingers; but they were handy enough, after the sturdy Scotch
fashion, and they earned some sort of livelihood in a humble way
for herself and her fatherless boy. The farmers about found her
work on their farms at haymaking or milking, and their wives took
the child home with them while its mother was busy labouring in the
harvest fields. Amid such small beginnings did the greatest of
English engineers before the railway era receive his first hard
lessons in the art of life.

After her husband's death, the poor widow removed from her old
cottage to a still more tiny hut, which she shared with a
neighbour--a very small hut, with a single door for both families;