Scenes And Incidents From The Life Of A Practical Miner
With A Treatise On The Ventilation Of Coal Mines

63 sideration on account of the circumstances I have already explained. The work would have been completed ere now, but for my own pecuniary position, which has subjected me to many inconveniences, and raised up difficulties almost insurmountable. However, should it meet your appro- bation, and be found acceptable to the trade, then will I have gained the object of my wish, and if at any future time it may be the means of qualifying some of you to protect and preserve the lives of your fellow- workmen, then will I be amply rewarded for the toil and trouble that attends a life spent in earnest pursuit of tlie knowledge necessary to enable a man to guide each district volume with mechanical skill, so that it shall be sufficient in quantity for its required purposes, and good in quality for the health and safety of the workmen through the whole extent of the mine. Many of you will no doubt discover, even in early- life, an active and inventive mind, and a desire to find a field for the exercise of your faculties. But if you should fail to procure a patron to assist you in the development of your conceptions, you will soon find yourself in a precarious position even among your fellow-workmen, and also your employers and masters. This I have experienced in my passage through life, with deception on the one hand, and disappointment in my applications to the firm I choose for myself, and to whose interest I had resolved to give the benefit of those acquirements which I possessed. And now, as the approbation of the public is as a feather in the cap of the author, so your judgment will guide my future intentions. This narration of details has been hurried into the press to meet the exigency, almost without a revision of its contents; but I flatter myself to give you more satisfaction on some future occasion, should health and my circum- stances in life permit me to do so. I intend to give you a historical and descriptive account of the mines, with the manners and customs of the miners of fifty years ago, interspersed with their native anecdotes, show- ing their progress of improvement up to the present time. And you, fellow- miners, who are in your day struggling with the labour and daring the dangers of the mine, excuse my loud complaining until you learn the cause, with the sad effects on my circumstances. The truth, if I tell it, is almost a libel; indeed I am threatened with an indictment for publishing it to the world, but, come what may, I am resolved, as “the breast that inly bleeds need little dread the outward blow.” As you will leai-n, my present position is a precarious one; for even now,although far removed from the scenes of your labour, misfortune mocks me in the face, and dis- appointment follows in iny path, imposed on me by a class of men who are articled and licensed by the state to inflict injuries on their fellow men with impunity. What now is death to me? or what would life be without tlie moral fortitude to adopt the noble advice imparted to the human family by England’s great and immortal bard— ‘ ‘ When remedies are past, the griefs are ended By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended : To mourn a mischief that is past and gone, Is the best way to draw new mischief on. What cannot be preserved when fortune takes, Patience, her injury a mockery makes; The robb’d that smiles steals something from the thief; He robs himself that spends a bootless grief,”