"I had the good luck," he says, "to have for a school companion the son of an iron founder. Every spare hour that I could command was devoted to visits to his father's iron foundry, where I delighted to watch the various processes of moulding, iron-melting, casting, forging, pattern-making, and other smith and metal work; and although I was only about twelve years old at the time, I used to lend a hand, in which hearty zeal did a good deal to make up for want of strength. I look back to the Saturday afternoons spent in the workshops of that small foundry, as an important part of my education. I did not trust to reading about such and such things; I saw and handled them; and all the ideas in connection with them became permanent in my mind. I also obtained there--what was of much value to me in after life--a considerable acquaintance with the nature and characters of workmen. By the time I was fifteen, I could work and turn out really respectable jobs in wood, brass, iron, and steel: indeed, in the working of the latter inestimable material, I had at a very early age (eleven or twelve) acquired considerable proficiency. As that was the pre-lucifer match period, the possession of a steel and tinder box was quite a patent of nobility among boys. So I used to forge old files into 'steels' in my father's little workshop, and harden them and produce such first-rate, neat little articles in that line, that I became quite famous amongst my school companions; and many a task have I had excused me by bribing the monitor, whose grim sense of duty never could withstand the glimpse of a steel.