It is true that he went to the Crosthwaite school and proved himself early to be a master of figures. The author who fascinated him then was Defoe. _The Memoirs of a Cavalier_ and _Robinson Crusoe_ were his teachers. From Crosthwaite school he went to Underbarrow and distinguished himself there chiefly for having the pluck to stand up to the big bully and thrash him in defence of the oppressed youngster. He became out of school times an expert and ardent follower of Isaac Walton. Years after, he wrote an appreciative paper which is extant on Walton and Cotton's _Complete Angler_, which he begins with the sentence, 'Among our most favourite books is The Complete Angler of Isaac Walton.' The boys of Underbarrow noticed that he hugged his garret where the owls built, and was often deep in old romances of _Amadis de Gaul_ and _Roncesvalles_ when others were out and away up the fells. But in the holidays he followed bark-peeling, not so much as that thus he might earn something that would pay for his schooling, as because in the months of May and June when the bark-peelers went to their fragrant task in the woods, there was a fine chance of becoming acquainted with the life-history {121} of many of our feathered visitors that were nesting at that time. In autumn his delight was to be after the woodcocks, and great was his joy, 'With store of springes o'er his shoulder hung, To range the open heights where woodcocks run Along the smooth green turf. Through half the night, Scudding away from snare to snare, he plied That anxious visitation.' In his copy of Wordsworth's _Prelude_, the marker, at his death, was found placed at this passage, and he never tired of telling the story of his woodcock adventures. His first work in life was to act as teacher in the Winster village school; he went thence to be tutor to the four children of a widow body at Cartmel Fell, but at the end of the year gave up teaching to take the place of a grocer's assistant at Kendal.