Three generations

CHAPTER IV
Time passed, the elder of my father and mother's six
children were growing up to womanhood. My father's
responsibilities on his family's account became more
pressing. He was aware that there was not sufficient
business for the many lawyers in the town to render
it probable that his profits as a junior partner would
greatly increase.
He had been happy to join the educated class, and
to find himself accepted as a welcome associate of men
of culture and intelligence. He had not chosen the
law as his profession from any special faculty or
preference for it. To follow the law had been the
only course open to him. Indeed, though he might
have liked the profession on a larger scale among the
judges and advocates of Edinburgh, for many of whom
he cherished immense respect and admiration, the law
as he saw it practised in the little country town, where
it was in danger of descending to what was petti-
fogging, far above which it did not often rise, awoke
no liking in him ; on the contrary, it caused a growing
aversion to its details. He sought a new outlet for
his powers and his ambition. He turned instinctively
to mining, with regard to which his father's occupation
as underground manager of well-known and extensive
coal-pits had given him a certain familiarity.
At the same time he had no practical knowledge to
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