Green cloth binding with gilt title and figure on the spine. Title and industrial figures on front board.

F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feel and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.
A book for boys

Hugh Miller was born at Cromarty, in 1802. His ancestors were a race of adventurous and skillful sailors, who had coasted the Scottish shores as early as the days of Sir Andrew Wood and the bold Barton. His great grandsire, one of the last of the buccaneers that sailed the Spanish Main, had invested a portion of his surplus doubloons in the long, low cottage where the subject of our sketch first drew breath. To avoid the hereditary fate of the family–which, in its male members, had, during many generations, nearly all perished at sea–Hugh Miller’s grandmother
consigned his father to the care of an aunt married to a neighbouring farmer. But an agricultural life was not his destiny. The boy was sent to drown a litter of puppies; his young heart relenting, he found the task impossible,
and towards gloaming wandered home to his mother with the doomed quadrupeds tucked up in his kilt. “Mother” said the boy, in reply to a maternal ejaculation of surprise “I couldna drown the little doggies, mother! and I brought them to you”. The youth “who couldna drown the doggies” afterwards did very effective execution upon the Dutch off the Dogger Bank in the memorable naval action of the name. Retiring from the service of his country–into which, indeed, he had been pressed without his consent–the next glimpse we have of Hugh Miller’s father, he is master of a craft that sails from his native Cromarty. For a time, fortune smiles upon the hardy tar; but, while sunning himself in success, he was doomed to feel how quickly adversity sometimes follows upon the heels of fortune.