At the age of twelve he showed the first signs of a taste and capacity for the acquisition of languages. A copy of Dyche's Latin Grammar and Vocabulary had come into his hands, and he at once set to work, of his own free will and choice, to study the introductory portion, and to commit all the Latin words, with their meanings, to memory. Such an incident as this was quite enough to show that he was a boy of no common mind, and that he would well repay any outlay that might be made in giving him a classical training. But that was out of the question; the village school could not afford such a training, and anything better, in the shape of grammar-school or college, was not to be had, for his friends were poor and had no patrons to assist them. What he might have done in an university it is idle to suppose. Undoubtedly, he would have distinguished himself, but it may be reasonably doubted whether he would have been led into the path of Christian philanthropy and usefulness which the stress of circumstances at Moulton led him to think and adopt. It must have been painful for his parents, with their sense of the boy's merits and ambition as a scholar, to see him languishing at home, unable to find sufficient food for his hungry and capacious young mind, while they also were unable to satisfy his passion for books, or send him to a school adequate to his requirements. And doubly painful must it have been for him as for them, when they felt that the time had come for him to learn a trade, and the thought of further schooling must be given up. One can imagine his feelings when told that he must be apprenticed to a shoemaker. Not that such an occupation was necessarily a bugbear to a boy in his position, for thousands of village lads would not have regarded it in that light; but it was so to _him_. His heart had been set on a very different kind of occupation. He was eager for study, and felt within him the movement of an impulse to do something great in the world, and this apprenticeship was a bitter disappointment, saddening his young heart, and quenching for a time all his bright hopes. But only for a time did he lose heart. He was one of those who are no friends to despair, who do not understand defeat, and whose spirit and determination rise in the face of difficulties. It was not to be expected in his circumstances that life could offer him any position of greater honor or advantage than a cobbler's stool. He would not, therefore, murmur at his necessary lot. He would rather take to it with as good a grace as possible, and make the best of it. He would use every means and chance of self-improvement, and if he could not have his heart's desire in the way he had intended, he would have it in some other way; anyhow he would have it. A broken purpose should no more stand in the way of his climbing the "tree of knowledge" than a broken leg had prevented his climbing to the top of the tree in his father's garden.