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I am neither a felonious drysalter returned from exile, an hospital stump-turner, a decayed staymaker, a bankrupt printer, or insolvent debtor, released by act of parliament.
Of personal beauty she herself was satisfied that the Gods had kindly granted her a full share. 'Tis true, her stature was dwarfish: but then, she had so genteel an air! Her staymaker was one of the ablest in town. Her complexion could not but be to her mind, for it was of her own making.
In 1759, we find him living at Sandwich, a staymaker and a married man. In 1761, he was a widower and an officer of the excise. From this position he was dismissed, for some reason which escaped both Cobbett and Cheetham, and eleven months afterward was reinstated on his own petition. In the interval, he found employment in London as usher in a school, at twenty-five pounds a year.
It is a curious circumstance that the next projector of an iron bridge and that of a very bold design was the celebrated, or rather the notorious, Tom Paine, whose political writings Telford had so much admired. The son of a decent Quaker of Thetford, who trained him to his own trade of a staymaker, Paine seems early to have contracted a dislike for the sect to which his father belonged.
His father was a staymaker, a Quaker, and poor. The son was sent to a free school, where he was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, enough learning to be given to any man at the public expense. With these three keys, if he is made of the right material, he can open the world.
The "young man" was thirty-seven years of age when he landed in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1774, to begin the real business of his life. He had been a staymaker, a sailor, an exciseman, a teacher, a shopkeeper, and an author, to say nothing of his twofold matrimonial experience. Such a long and various course of schooling had fitted him to become an American citizen.
Franklin persuaded him to go to America; and there the quondam staymaker, privateersman, usher, poet, an a exciseman, took an active part in the revolutionary discussions of the time, besides holding the important office of Secretary to the Committee for Foreign Affairs.
Proverbs are said to be but half-truths, but 'give a dog a bad name and hang him' is a saying almost as veracious as it is felicitous; and to no one can it possibly be applied with greater force than to Thomas Paine, the rebellious staymaker, the bankrupt tobacconist, the amazing author of Common-sense, The Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason.
The best known productions of Paine's subsequent career, "The Rights of Man" and "The Age of Reason," were written in Europe, but they were read throughout America. The reputation of the "rebellious Staymaker" has suffered from certain grimy habits and from the ridiculous charge of atheism. He was no more an atheist than Franklin or Jefferson.
His first lodgings were at the house of Mr. Norris, a staymaker, in Exeter-street, adjoining Catharine-street, in the Strand. Several of them had travelled. They expected to meet every day; but did not know one another's names.
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