Carey, as we have said, did not object to being called a "cobbler," although the term did not accurately describe his degree of proficiency in the trade. It was reported in Northamptonshire that he was a poor workman, the neighbors declaring that though he made boots, he "could never make _a pair_."[35] In a letter to Dr. Ryland he contradicts this report and says: "The childish story of my shortening a shoe to make it longer is entitled to no credit. I was accounted a very good workman, and recollect Mr. Old keeping a pair of shoes which I had made in his shop as a model of good workmanship." He cautiously adds, "But the best workmen sometimes, from various causes, put bad work out of their hands, and I have no doubt but I did so too."[36] This is more than likely, for he was subject to long fits of mental abstraction as he sat at the stall: "His eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away." [35] "Baptist Jubilee Memorial." London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1842, p. 83. [36] "Memoir of Dr. Carey," by the Rev. Eustace Carey. London: Jackson & Walford, 2d edition, 1837, p. 16. He pined for the field of missions and chafed against the cruel "bars of circumstance" that kept him in his native land. While engaged in shoemaking, he was so intent on learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew that he often forgot to fit the shoes to the last. No wonder if shoes were not "a pair," and were sometimes returned; no wonder that while he became one of the first linguists in the world in his day he was spoken of by his neighbors as nothing more than "a cobbler!" With reference to his poor abilities in the craft a good story is told of the way in which he silenced an officious person whose "false pride in place and blood" had betrayed him into some disparaging remarks about Carey as a shoemaker. His biographer[37] says: "Some thirty years after this period, dining one day with the Governor-General, Lord Hastings, at Barrakpore, a general officer made an impertinent inquiry of one of the aides-de-camp whether Dr. Carey had not once been a shoemaker. He happened to overhear the conversation, and immediately stepped forward and said, "No, sir; only a cobbler!" [37] J. C. Marshman, in "The Story of Carey, Marshman, and Ward;" London, J. Heaton & Sons, 1864, p. 6. See also an account of Carey's life and work in "The Missionary Keepsake and Annual," by Rev. John Dyer; London, Fisher & Co., 1837; and "The Life of Dr. Carey," by the Rev. Eustace Carey; London, 1837.