It was very hard work; the hours were from six in the morning till eight
at night, for there was no Factory Act then to guard the interest of
helpless children; so the boys had to be up at four in the morning, and
were seldom home again till nine at night. In winter, the snow lies long
and deep on those chilly Aberdeenshire roads, and the east winds from
the German Ocean blow cold and cutting up the narrow valley of the Don;
and it was dreary work toiling along them in the dark of morning or of
night in bleak and cheerless December weather. Still, Tam liked it on
the whole extremely well. His wages were now three shillings a week; and
then, twice a day in summer, there was the beautiful walk to and fro
along the leafy high-road. "People may say of factories what they
please," Edward wrote much later, "but I liked this factory. It was a
happy time for me whilst I remained there. The woods were easy of access
during our meal-hours. What lots of nests! What insects, wild flowers,
and plants, the like of which I had never seen before." The boy revelled
in the beauty of the birds and beasts he saw here, and he retained a
delightful recollection of them throughout his whole after life.

This happy time, however, was not to last for ever. When young Edward
was eleven years old, his father took him away from Grandholm, and
apprenticed him to a working shoemaker. The apprenticeship was to go on
for six years; the wages to begin at eighteen-pence a week; and the
hours, too sadly long, to be from six in the morning till nine at night.
Tam's master, one Charles Begg, was a drunken London workman, who had
wandered gradually north; a good shoemaker, but a quarrelsome, rowdy
fellow, loving nothing on earth so much as a round with his fists on the
slightest provocation. From this unpromising teacher, Edward took his
first lessons in the useful art of shoemaking; and though he learned
fast--for he was not slothful in business--he would have learned faster,