He was not yet thirty years of age, but had encountered and conquered many difficulties. This is a sort of character which is more often to be met with in remote country places than in thickly-peopled cities. In the country a man is more of an individual; in a city he is only one of a multitude. The country boy has to rely upon himself, and has to work in comparative solitude, while the city boy is distracted by excitements. Life in the country is full of practical teachings; whereas life in the city may be degraded by frivolities and pleasures, which are too often the foes of work. Hence we have usually to go to out-of-the-way corners of the country for our hardest brain-workers. Contact with the earth is a great restorer of power; and it is to the country folks that we must ever look for the recuperative power of the nation as regards health, vigour, and manliness.
Bainbridge is a remote country village, situated among the high lands or Fells on the north-western border of Yorkshire. The mountains there send out great projecting buttresses into the dales; and the waters rush down from the hills, and form waterfalls or Forces, which Turner has done so much to illustrate. The river Bain runs into the Yore at Bainbridge, which is supposed to be the site of an old Roman station. Over the door of the Grammar School is a mermaid, said to have been found in a camp on the top of Addleborough, a remarkable limestone hill which rises to the south-east of Bainbridge. It is in this grammar-school that we find the subject of this little autobiography. He must be allowed to tell the story of his life--which he describes as ' Work: Good, Bad, and Indifferent'
--in his own words:
"I was born on November 20th, 1853. In my childhood I suffered from ill-health. My parents let me play about in the open air, and did not put me to school until I had turned my sixth year.
One day, playing in the shoemaker's shop, William Farrel asked me if I knew my letters. I answered 'No.' He then took down a primer from a shelf, and began to teach me the alphabet, at the same time amusing me by likening the letters to familiar objects in his shop. I soon learned to read, and in about six weeks Isurprised my father by reading from an easy book which the shoemaker had given me.
"My father then took me into the school, of which he was master, and my education may be said fairly to have begun. My progress, however, was very slow partly owing to ill-health, but more, Imust acknowledge, to carelessness and inattention. In fact, during the first four years I was at school, I learnt very little of anything, with the exception of reciting verses, which Iseemed to learn without any mental effort. My memory became very retentive. I found that by attentively reading half a page of print, or more, from any of the school-books, I could repeat the whole of it without missing a word. I can scarcely explain how Idid it; but I think it was by paying strict attention to the words as words, and forming a mental picture of the paragraphs as they were grouped in the book. Certain, I am, that their sense never made much impression on me, for, when questioned by the teacher, I was always sent to the bottom of the class, though apparently I had learned my exercise to perfection.
"When I was twelve years old, I made the acquaintance of a very ingenious boy, who came to our school. Samuel Bridge was a born mechanic. Though only a year older than myself, such was his ability in the use of tools, that he could construct a model of any machine that he saw. He awakened in me a love of mechanical construction, and together we made models of colliery winding-frames, iron-rolling mills, trip-hammers, and water-wheels. Some of them were not mere toys, but constructed to scale, and were really good working models. This love of mechanical construction has never left me, and I shall always remember with affection Samuel Bridge, who first taught me to use the hammer and file. The last I heard of him was in 1875, when he passed his examination as a schoolmaster, in honours, and was at the head of his list.
"During the next two years, when between twelve and fourteen, Imade comparatively slow progress at school. I remember having to write out the fourth commandment from memory. The teacher counted twenty-three mistakes in ten lines of my writing. It will be seen from this, that, as regards learning, I continued heedless and backward. About this time, my father, who was a good violinist, took me under his tuition. He made me practice on the violin about an hour and a half a day. I continued this for a long time. But the result was failure. I hated the violin, and would never play unless compelled to do so. Isuppose the secret was that I had no 'ear.'
"It was different with subjects more to my mind. Looking over my father's books one day, I came upon Gregory's 'Handbook of Inorganic Chemistry,' and began reading it. I was fascinated with the book, and studied it morning, noon, and night--in fact, every time when I could snatch a few minutes. I really believe that at one time I could have repeated the whole of the book from memory. Now I found the value of arithmetic, and set to work in earnest on proportion, vulgar and decimal fractions, and, in fact, everything in school work that I could turn to account in the science of chemistry. The result of this sudden application was that I was seized with an illness. For some months I had incessant headache; my hair became dried up, then turned grey, and finally came off. Weighing myself shortly after my recovery, at the age of fifteen, I found that I just balanced fifty-six pounds. I took up mensuration, then astronomy, working at them slowly, but giving the bulk of my spare time to chemistry.
