family ceased to sojourn in Durham, and returned to its native Northumberland, settling ultimately for a period of eight or nine j-ears at Seaton Delaval. Here further promotion awaited young Burt. He became a "water-leader," and his wages varied from sixty to eighty-four cents per day. "Water-leading" is not a specially amusing occupation. Before you know where 30U are, you are frequently up to the waist in the subterranean liquid, which has about as much fancy for being "led" as a Tipperary pig. Add to this that the horn's of labor, though nominally twelve, were practically thirteen "from bank to bank," and that the distance to and from home was a good two miles' walk, and it will readily be granted that the honorable member for Morpeth' s opportunities for self-culture were in no way enviable.
At fifteen years of age he had, besides, recklessly cut himself off from the consolation of champagne by becoming a total abstainer; and somewhat later he had to cure an inherited weakness for the cultivation of music, simply because he had no time to spare. In his eighteenth year, however, he graduated as a pitman. He became a "hewer," and his wages rose as high as a dollar or even a dollar and a quarter per diem, the hours of labor sensibly diminishing at the same time.
And so on Mr. Burt went, "toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing," till the autumn of 1865, when he was elected by his brother-workmen general secretary of the Northumberland Miners' Association. Then, after eighteen years of unremitting underground toil, and the usual miners' hairbreadth escapes with his life, Mr. Burt got permanently to the surface; and eight years later his apparition startled the "rich men" at St. Stephen's.
