One day the visitor arrived, and without looking at the specimens, he went directly up to Edward and asked, “Well, how are you getting on?” “Very poorly,” was the answer. “And no wonder!” said the visitor. “How?” “How!” he almost shouted, “because the people here don’t believe in such a thing. I am sure of it from what I know and have heard myself.”
“Come? that’s the very thing. It seems they’ll not come. And although they did, what satisfactory evidence is there that what they see is the result of your own unaided and individual labour? You are quite a stranger here. You should have had some persons of high standing in the city to take you under their patronage: say the professors of both colleges, or the provost and town-council. Oh! you needn’t shake your head and look at the floor. It would have been much better.”
“I never considered myself in a position,” said Edward, “to ask such a favour.”
“Then you’ll not succeed here unless you do something of the sort.”
“In that case, then,” said Edward, “I’ll be plain enough to tell you that I never will succeed.”
“You are too stiff—too unbending,” said the Doctor. “Then, you know very well, that you have nobody in Aberdeen to confirm your extraordinary statement. You say that the whole of this collection is entirely the work of your own hands, and that it is your own exclusive property!”
“Yes! I bought the game birds; and as regards the others, I procured the whole of them myself,—preserved them and cased them, just as you see them.”
“And had you to work for your living all that time?”
“Yes; and for the living of my family too.”
“Ah, yes, I know; I beg your pardon. But do you mean to say that you have maintained your wife and family by working at your trade, all the while that you have been making this collection?”
“Oh, nonsense! How is it possible that you could have done that?”
“By never losing a single minute, nor any part of a minute, that I could by any means improve.”
“Did you ever hear of any one else who had ever done the like before?”
“No. But thousands might have done it, and much more too.”
“Well, I don’t believe it. I have never heard of such a thing, and I have never read of such a thing!”
“But I never thought,” said Edward, “that I was doing anything, that any one else might not have done. I was quite unaware of the fact that I was doing anything in the least way meritorious. But if I have, as a journeyman shoemaker, done anything worthy of praise, then I must say that there is not a working man on the face of the earth that could not have done much more than I have done; for of all the occupations that are known, that of shoemaking is surely the very worst.”