Most likely, although there might have been fear in the boyish heart, it also beat high with hope. Again and again has London made fair promises to boys such as he. But disappointment was to meet him on the very threshold. He found that apprentices who intended to serve a term of seven years were only accepted. This was very far from James's thoughts. What he wanted was to learn the trade, start off home again, and set up in Glasgow for himself as soon as possible. After many failures, however, he at last found a man willing to take him on for a year on his promise to pay twenty guineas with the results of his work during that time.
And now began a time of stern work and self-denial. He took poor lodgings. He scrimped himself in everything but the bare necessaries of life. He spent on himself exactly eight shillings a week. He could not, he wrote, do with less. He scraped and pinched, remembering how ill his father could afford his keep.
When he could get extra work he took it home at nights to his poor rooms and sat up late over it, often ill and weary. In a month he could make a quadrant better than any of the other apprentices. And so he struggled on against loneliness and headache and depression. It was rarely safe to venture out at night at that time in London, for sailor press-gangs were abroad. No able-bodied man was spared. In one night they took as many as 1,000 men. Sitting as he did close to the shop door when at work, he was often exposed to cold, and caught rheumatic pains which did not leave him for many a day. After a year of this he went home to Greenock, in his possession some tools and instruments, and in his hands and brain a mighty store of skill and knowledge.
Revived by his native air he set out again to seek his fortune--again to Glasgow. Again to be met with disappointment! He had not learned his trade in Glasgow, and therefore Glasgow would have none of him. Not so much as a workshop would it give him. It seemed almost as if there were no place open for the boy.
But his friend the professor came to the front again. If Watt could find no place in the city, then the University should shelter him. And so they gave him a workshop twenty feet square in the old College grounds, and a room in which to sell his instruments, and he was at last fairly launched.