more than a journeyman mason all the days of his life. It is a
great mistake, even from the point of view of mere worldly success,
for a young man to read or learn only what "pays" in his particular
calling; the more he reads and learns, the more will he find that
seemingly useless things "pay" in the end, and that what apparently
pays least, often really pays most in the long run. This is not
the only or the best reason why every man should aim at the highest
possible cultivation of his own talents, be they what they may; but
it is in itself a very good reason, and it is a sufficient answer
for those who would deter us from study of any high kind on the
ground that it "does no good." Telford found in after-life that
his early acquaintance with sound English literature did do him a
great deal of good: it opened and expanded his mind; it trained his
intelligence; it stored his brain with images and ideas which were
ever after to him a source of unmitigated delight and unalloyed
pleasure. He read whenever he had nothing else to do. He read
Milton with especial delight; and he also read the verses that his
fellow-countryman, Rob Burns, the Ayrshire ploughman, was then just
beginning to speak straight to the heart of every aspiring Scotch
peasant lad. With these things Tam Telford filled the upper
stories of his brain quite as much as with the trade details of his
own particular useful handicraft; and the result soon showed that
therein Tam Telford had not acted uncannily or unwisely.

Nor did he read only; he wrote too--verses, not very good, nor yet
very bad, but well expressed, in fairly well chosen language, and
with due regard to the nice laws of metre and of grammar, which is
in itself a great point. Writing verse is an occupation at which
only very few even among men of literary education ever really
succeed; and nine-tenths of published verse is mere mediocre