By prudence, good management, and the forbearance of creditors, she not only succeeded in rearing and educating her children, but gradually liquidated the whole of her husband’s debts. Some years later, by an unexpected stroke of fortune, she was able to relinquish her business. She lived to a good old age, cheerful and serene, happy in the respect and affection of her children and in the esteem and regard of her townspeople. Such a woman could not fail to exercise a strong and lasting influence for good on her children. That it powerfully affected the character of her son Humphry, he would have been the first to admit. Nothing in him was more remarkable or more beautiful than his strong and abiding love for his mother. No matter how immersed he was in his own affairs, he could always find time amidst the whirl and excitement of his London life, amidst the worry and anxiety of official cares--or, when abroad, among the peaks of the Noric Alps or the ruins of Italian cities--to think of his far-away Cornish home and of her round whom it was centred. To the last he opened out his heart to her as he did to none other; she shared in all his aspirations, and lived with him through his triumphs; and by her death, just a year before his own, she was happily spared the knowledge of his physical decay and approaching end. * * * * * Davy was about sixteen years of age when his father died. At that time he was a bright, curly-haired, hazel-eyed lad, somewhat narrow-chested and undergrown, awkward in manner and gait, but keenly fond of out-door sport, and more distinguished for a love of mischief than of learning. Dr. Cardew, of the Truro Grammar School, where, by the kindness of the Tonkins, he spent the year preceding his father’s death, wrote of him that he did not at that time discover any extraordinary abilities, or, so far as could be observed, any propensity to those scientific pursuits which raised him to such eminence. “His best exercises were translations from the classics into English verse.” He had previously spent nine years in the Penzance Grammar School under the tyranny of the Rev. Mr. Coryton, a man of irregular habits and as deficient in good method as in scholarship. As Davy used to come up for the customary castigation, the worthy follower of Orbilius was wont to repeat-- “Now, Master Davy, Now, sir! I have ’ee No one shall save ’ee-- Good Master Davy!” He had, too, an unpleasant habit of pulling the boys’ ears, on the supposition, apparently, that their receptivity for oral instruction was thereby stimulated. It is recorded that on one occasion Davy appeared before him with a large plaster on each ear, explaining, with a very grave face, that he had “put the plasters on to prevent mortification.” Whence it may be inferred that, in spite of all the caning and the ear-pulling, there was still much of the unregenerate Adam left in “good Master Davy.”