Produced by Tonya Allen Juliet Sutherland Charles Franksand the Online Distributed Proofreading Team This file was produced from images generously made availableby the Canadian Institute for Historical MicroreproductionsBIOGRAPHIES OF WORKING MENBYGRANT ALLEN BACONTENTSI THOMAS TELFORD STONEMASONII GEORGE STEPHENSON ENGINEMANIII JOHN GIBSON SCULPTORIV WILLIAM HERSCHEL BANDSMANV JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET PAINTERVI JAMES GARFIELD CANAL BOYVII THOMAS EDWARD SHOEMAKERPREFACEMy acknowledgments are due to Dr Smiless Lives of the EngineersLife of the Stephensons and Life of a Scotch Naturalist to LadyEastlakes Life of Gibson to Mr Holdens Life of Sir WilliamHerschel to M Seusiers J F Millet Sa Vie et Ses OEuvres and toMr Thayers Life of President Garfield from which most of the factshere narrated have been derivedG AITHOMAS TELFORD STONEMASONHigh up among the heatherclad hills which form the broad dividingbarrier between England and Scotland the little river Esk brawls andbickers over its stony bed through a wild land of barren braesides andbrown peat mosses forming altogether some of the gloomiest and mostforbidding scenery in the whole expanse of northern Britain Almost theentire bulk of the counties of Dumfries Kirkcudbright and Ayr iscomposed of just such solemn desolate upland wolds with only a fewstray farms or solitary cottages sprinkled at wide distances over theirbare bleak surface and with scarcely any sign of life in any part savethe little villages which cluster here and there at long intervalsaround some stern and simple Scottish church Yet the hardy people whoinhabit this wild and chilly moorland country may well be considered torank among the best raw material of society in the whole of Britain forfrom the peasant homes of these southern Scotch Highlands have comeforth among a host of scarcely less distinguished natives three menat least who deserve to take their place in the very front line ofBritish thinkers or workersThomas Telford Robert Burns and ThomasCarlyle By origin all three alike belonged in the very strictest senseto the working classes and the story of each is full of lessons or ofwarnings for every one of us but that of Telford is perhaps the mostencouraging and the most remarkable of all as showing how much may beaccomplished by energy and perseverance even under the most absolutelyadverse and difficult circumstancesNear the upper end of Eskdale in the tiny village of Westerkirk ayoung shepherds wife gave birth to a son on the 9th of August 1757Her husband John Telford was employed in tending sheep on aneighbouring farm and he and his Janet occupied a small cottage closeby with mud walls and rudely thatched roof such as in southern Englandeven the humblest agricultural labourer would scarcely consent willinglyto inhabit Before the child was three months old his father died andJanet Telford was left alone in the world with her unweaned baby But inremote country districts neighbours are often more neighbourly than ingreat towns and a poor widow can manage to eke out a livelihood forherself with an occasional lift from the helping hands of friendlyfellowvillagers Janet Telford had nothing to live upon save her ownten fingers but they were handy enough after the sturdy Scotchfashion and they earned some sort of livelihood in a humble way forherself and her fatherless boy The farmers about found her work ontheir farms at haymaking or milking and their wives took the child homewith them while its mother was busy labouring in the harvest fieldsAmid such small beginnings did the greatest of English engineers beforethe railway era receive his first hard lessons in the art of lifeAfter her husbands death the poor widow removed from her old cottageto a still more tiny hut which she shared with a neighboura verysmall hut with a single door for both families and here young TamTelford spent most of his boyhood in the quiet honourable poverty of theuncomplaining rural poor As soon as he was big enough to herd sheep hewas turned out upon the hillside in summer like any other ragged countryladdie and in winter he tended cows receiving for wages only his foodand money enough to cover the cost of his scanty clothing He went toschool too how nobody now knows but he _did_ go to the parishschool of Westerkirk and there he learnt with a will in the wintermonths though he had to spend the summer on the more profitable task ofworking in the fields To a steady earnest boy like young Tam Telfordhowever it makes all the difference in the world that he should havebeen to school no matter how simply Those twentysix letters of thealphabet once fairly learnt are the key after all to all the booklearning in the whole world Without them the shepherdboy might remainan ignorant unprogressive shepherd all his life long even hisundeniable native energy using itself up on nothing better than awattled hurdle or a thatched roof with them the path is open beforehim which led Tam Telford at last to the Menai Bridge and WestminsterAbbeyWhen Tam had gradually eaten his way through enough thin oatmealporridge with very little milk we fear to make him into a hearty ladof fifteen it began to be high time for him to choose himself a finalprofession in life such as he was able And here already the borntastes of the boy began to show themselves for he had no liking for thehomely shepherds trade he felt a natural desire for a chisel and ahammerthe engineer was there already in the grainand he wasaccordingly apprenticed to a stonemason in the little town of Lochmabenbeyond the purple hills to eastward But his master was a hard man hehad small mercy for the raw lad and after trying to manage with him fora few months Tam gave it up took the law into his own hands and ranaway Probably the provocation was severe for in afterlife Telfordalways showed himself duly respectful to constituted authority and weknow that petty selfmade masterworkmen are often apt to be excessivelysevere to their own hired helpers and especially to helpless lads oryoung apprentices At any rate Tam wouldnt go back and in the end awelltodo cousin who had risen to