Thus abruptly the scheme was abandoned. They retraced their steps to the old farm, and the boy found employment for a time at Craigend, near Stirling. There he formed the acquaintance of Symington, whose steam-engine was first applied to navigation, and sailed with him in some of the earliest trial-trips on the Carron Water. The pottery which his father had neglected was started on a neighbouring farm, and young Nelson was anxious to get the management of it. But the scheme appears to have been distasteful to his father, whose secret desire probably was that his boy should follow his own example, and so escape the world’s trials and temptations. But the son’s ambition aimed at something more advantageous than the homely career of a lowland farmer; and so, by-and-by, he betook himself to London, entered the service of a publishing house there, and began the training which ultimately begot the great publishing firm that bears his name.
The young Scottish Covenanter did not forget his early training, amid the temptations of the great metropolis. Along with a few other Scotchmen of his own age, he established a weekly meeting for religious fellowship; and it is told of one of the little band, who was employed at the dock-yard, that he forfeited his situation rather than work on the Sabbath day. But he had already won the favourable opinion of Lord Melville, who, on learning of his dismissal, severely rebuked the officials, and soon after advanced him to a higher post. From London, Thomas Nelson made his way to Edinburgh with what little capital his frugality had enabled him to accumulate, and there he started his first book-store, stocked chiefly with second-hand books, but from which ere long he began the issue of cheap reprints of the “Scots Worthies” and other popular religious works, in monthly parts. He had to proceed cautiously in this new venture, for his capital was small; but he had the courage to shape out a course of his own. With sagacious foresight he overleapt the intermediate stages of publishing and bookselling, and grafted on to the traffic of the mediæval fairs some of the most modern usages of free trade. The full results of this bold step are even now only partially developed, though its ultimate advantages are beginning to be generally recognized, and to force themselves on the attention of the great publishing houses, accustomed hitherto to cater only with small editions of costly volumes for the libraries of the wealthy, supplemented in recent years by the expedient of lending libraries.