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He ceased to compose; but as the intellectual faculty must have some employment, he became a translator, a contributor to dictionaries, a microscopic student of texts, not in the interest of anything beyond, but simply as a kind of mental stone-breaking. The only survival of that moment of glow and color in his life was his love of music and the theatre.
He had not paid the latest instalment due, and he had not done well with the winter stone-breaking, which from year to year had helped him over the worst. He had not sufficient strength for all that fell to his lot. But he was plucky. "What does it matter if I'm a few hundred kroner in arrears when I have improved the property to the tune of several thousand?" he would say.
John, when not thirteen, is set to stone-breaking on the roads during intense cold, and has to keep himself from being frostbitten and heart-broken by monkey gambols; takes to the weaving trade, and having helped his family by the most desperate economy to save ten pounds wherewith to buy looms, begins to work them, with his brother as an apprentice, and finds the whole outlay rendered useless the very same year by the failures of 1825- 26.
With these, comically interpolated with English expletives, he performed marvels, from stone-breaking to bridge-building. Presumably he gave his instruction by some process of thought-transmission, an art that seems peculiarly suited to the genius of the British soldier.
In going from Taunton to Bath, I suffered between l0,000 and 12,000 severe contusions, before stone-breaking Macadam was born.... As the basket of stage-coaches in which luggage was then carried had no springs, your clothes were rubbed all to pieces; and, even in the best society, one-third of the gentlemen at least were always drunk..... I paid 15L. in a single year for repairs of carriage-springs on the pavement of London; and I now glide without noise or fracture on wooden pavement.
They went across country toward the stone-quarry, following stone dikes and snow-filled ditches, and working their way through the thicket of blackthorn and juniper, behind which lay the rocks and "the Heath." They made their way right into the quarry, and tried in the darkness to find the place where the dross was thrown, for that would be where the stone-breaking went on.
They went across country toward the stone-quarry, following stone dikes and snow-filled ditches, and working their way through the thicket of blackthorn and juniper, behind which lay the rocks and "the Heath." They made their way right into the quarry, and tried in the darkness to find the place where the dross was thrown, for that would be where the stone-breaking went on.
Having bestowed these benefactions on the harmless workman, the British Poor-law in return insists that he shall become a hopeless pauper by stealing from him his handicraft. I tried stone-breaking pretty often later in the course of my tramp, and found it a much less painful occupation.
After dinner I return to my stone-breaking, and feel with delight my growing biceps muscle, and after my supper, which is monotonously like my breakfast, I tackle the tracts, which are left with me by kindly souls.
He ceased to compose; but as the intellectual faculty must have some employment, he became a translator, a contributor to dictionaries, a microscopic student of texts, not in the interest of anything beyond, but simply as a kind of mental stone-breaking. The only survival of that moment of glow and colour in his life was his love of music and the theatre.
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