Scotchman very greatly. They lived, he said, from week to week entirely;
any time beyond a week seemed unfortunately to lie altogether outside
the range of their limited comprehension.

At the end of two years in London, Telford's skill and study began to
bear good fruit. His next engagement was one which raised him for the
first time in his life above the rank of a mere journeyman mason. The
honest workman had attracted the attention of competent judges. He
obtained employment as foreman of works of some important buildings in
Portsmouth Dockyard. A proud man indeed was Thomas Telford at this
change of fortune, and very proudly he wrote to his old friends in
Eskdale, with almost boyish delight, about the trust reposed in him by
the commissioners and officers, and the pains he was taking with the
task entrusted to him. For he was above all things a good workman, and
like all good workmen he felt a pride and an interest in all the jobs he
took in hand. His sense of responsibility and his sensitiveness, indeed,
were almost too great at times for his own personal comfort. Things
_will_ go wrong now and then, even with the greatest care; well-
planned undertakings will not always pay, and the best engineering does
not necessarily succeed in earning a dividend; but whenever such mishaps
occurred to his employers, Telford felt the disappointment much too
keenly, as though he himself had been to blame for their miscalculations
or over-sanguine hopes. Still, it is a good thing to put one's heart in
one's work, and so much Thomas Telford certainly did.

About this time, too, the rising young mason began to feel that he must
get a little more accurate scientific knowledge. The period for general
study had now passed by, and the period for special trade reading had
set in. This was well. A lad cannot do better than lay a good foundation
of general knowledge and general literature during the period when he is