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 I
surprised 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, I
must 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 I
seemed 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 I
did 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.
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