Читать книгу Adventures and Recollections - Bill o'th' Hoylus End - Страница 36

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Then my father determined that I should have a trade of some sort. I began to have a little taste for sculpture in a primitive kind of way, and I used to smuggle big stones into my bed-chamber, and, when opportunity offered, try to carve figures, busts, &c., out of them, with tools which, I must confess, were far from having a razor’s edge on them. My father came to know of my efforts in this line, and he and my mother held a confab, the result of which was that I was apprenticed to an uncle of mine, a mason named Joshua Hill, of Harden. I remained at this business for a fair time and helped my uncle to build Ryecroft Primitive Methodist Chapel. He gave me every opportunity to become efficient in my new calling if practice goes for anything. When I pass the chapel at Ryecroft I look with some amount of pride on the two stoops, enclosing the door, which I hewed out. After finishing the chapel my uncle Joshua commenced the erection of a tavern, called the “Moorcock,” at Harden. But in my new situation my pocket-money was very limited. I didn’t appreciate this limitation, and I left the service of my uncle and went to Bingley.