In the following year, at the age of sixteen, he was articled as an engineer for five years to the owners of Percy Main, and was placed under the charge of Mr. Robinson, the engine-wright of the colliery. His wages as apprentice were 8s. a week; but by working over-hours, making wooden wedges used in pit-work, and blocking out segments of solid oak required for walling the sides of the mine, he considerably increased his earnings, which enabled him to add to the gross income of the family, who were still struggling with the difficulties of small means and increasing expenses. When not engaged upon over-work in the evenings, he occupied himself in self-education. He drew up a scheme of daily study with this object, to which he endeavoured to adhere as closely as possible,--devoting the evenings of Mondays to mensuration and arithmetic; Tuesdays to history and poetry; Wednesdays to recreation, novels, and romances; Thursdays to algebra and mathematics; Fridays to Euclid and trigonometry; Saturdays to recreation; and Sundays to church, Milton, and recreation. He was enabled to extend the range of his reading by the help of the North Shields Subscription Library, to which his father entered him a subscriber. Portions of his spare time were also occasionally devoted to mechanical construction, in which he cultivated the useful art of handling tools. One of his first attempts was the contrivance of a piece of machinery worked by a weight and a pendulum, that should at the same time serve for a timepiece and an orrery; but his want of means, as well as of time, prevented him prosecuting this contrivance to completion. He was more successful with the construction of a fiddle, on which he was ambitious to become a performer. It must have been a tolerable instrument, for a professional player offered him 20s. for it. But though he succeeded in making a fiddle, and for some time persevered in the attempt to play upon it, he did not succeed in producing any satisfactory melody, and at length gave up the attempt, convinced that nature had not intended him for a musician.[1] In due course of time our young engineer was removed from the workshop, and appointed to take charge of the pumps of the mine and the steam-engine by which they were kept in work. This employment was more to his taste, gave him better "insight," and afforded him greater opportunities for improvement. The work was, however, very trying, and at times severe, especially in winter, the engineer being liable to be drenched with water every time that he descended the shaft to regulate the working of the pumps; but, thanks to a stout constitution, he bore through these exposures without injury, though others sank under them. At this period he had the advantage of occasional days of leisure, to which he was entitled by reason of his nightwork; and during such leisure he usually applied himself to reading and study.