life in fullness to Meggy myself and our servant. You forget, my Dr
how much a woman can do without in domestick affairs to save
Money--a Woman that has any management at all can live with more
comfort on £50 a year than a Man could do on two hundred. There was
a year of my life that I maintained myself and two children on
twenty pound, the bread too was 1/2 the loave that year: we did not
indeed live very sumptuously nor shall I say our strength improved
much but I did not contract one farthing of debt and that to me
supplyed the want of luxuries. Now my Dr John let me never hear a
fear expressed on my account; there is no fear of me; make yourself
happy and all will be well, and for God sake my beloved Boy take
care of your health, take a good drink of porter to dinner and
supper and a little Wine now and then, and tell me particularly
about yr new Lodgings," etc.

He returned home to Edinburgh on a visit and arranged a marriage with
his cousin Margaret, if she would wait for him until he was safely
established; and then he set to work at the responsibilities of creating
a new business. It was a severer task than he had anticipated, for his
father's brain and business, as the above letter hints, had both gone
wrong; he left Edinburgh and settled at Bower's Well, Perth, ended
tragically, and left a load of debt behind him, which the son, sensitive
to the family honour, undertook to pay before laying by a penny for
himself. It took nine years of assiduous labour and economy. He worked
the business entirely by himself. The various departments that most men
entrust to others he filled in person. He managed the correspondence,
he travelled for orders, he arranged the importation, he directed the
growers out in Spain, and gradually built up a great business, paid off
his father's creditors, and secured his own competence.