was amply sufficient for the poor cobbler's purposes, and served as the field of operations in all his benevolent enterprises. Pounds lived alone in his snug little home; and as his earnings, though small, were more than enough to meet the requirements of a bachelor, he felt it right to do something to assist his poor relatives. He had a brother--a seafaring man--whose family was large and stood in need of assistance. John accordingly proposed to take one of his brother's children and clothe, board, and educate him as if he had been his own. With characteristic generosity of spirit, he selected a poor little fellow who was a cripple. The child's feet turned inward, and, as he walked, he had to lift them one over another. The tender-hearted cobbler could not endure to see the deformity, and soon devised the means of remedy. A neighbor's child who suffered in the same way had been provided by a surgeon with a set of irons which straightened his feet and enabled him to walk properly. Unable to purchase irons for his own little charge, Pounds set to work to construct something in lieu of them to answer the same purpose. His apparatus, made out of old shoe soles, answered admirably, and he soon had the gratification of seeing the little fellow entirely cured of his defect. This boy grew up under his uncle's care, was put apprentice to a fashionable shoemaker, and lived with Pounds till the time of his death. When his nephew was old enough to begin to learn to read, John Pounds resolved to do the work of a schoolmaster himself; and, thinking that his little pupil would get on better if he had a companion, he began to look round for some one to share the benefit of his instructions. He selected a poor little urchin, "the son of a poor woman who went about selling puddings, her homeless children, unable to accompany her, being left in the open street amid frost and snow, with no other shelter than the overhanging shade of a bay-window."[54] Other pupils were added in course of time, and the shoemaker soon began to take great delight in the work of teaching. It was not very difficult in Portsmouth to find plenty of children whose education and training were entirely neglected by their parents, and who were suffered to run about the streets in the most ragged and destitute condition. The sight of these children moved him to pity; and, once embarked on the enterprise of reforming and teaching them, Pounds could not rest content with having half a dozen or a dozen of them under his care, but went on gathering them into his room until he had, in the later years of his life, an average of forty poor children under his charge at a time. He loved his work all the more because it was entirely gratuitous, and because he knew that if these poor children were not thus taught they would never be taught at all, but grow up in ignorance, misery, and vice. No amount of pains, self-sacrifice, and anxiety was too much for this true disciple of