Michael, the third child, born 1791, became, at thirteen years of age, an errand-boy in a bookseller's shop. His first duty was to carry newspapers in the morning to customers, who read them for an hour or two for a trifle, a penny probably, and then gave them to the newsboy to be re-loaned. Often on Sunday morning the patrons would say, "You must call again," forgetting that the next place might be a mile away, and that the young boy was quite as desirous as they, to go to church with his parents. Years after this, when he had become famous the world over, he said, "I always feel a tenderness for those boys, because I once carried newspapers myself." [Illustration: MICHAEL FARADAY.] The following year, 1805, he was apprenticed to a bookseller for seven years, to learn the trade of binding and selling books. Here was hard work before him till he was twenty-one; not a cheerful prospect for one who loved play as well as other boys. Whenever he had a spare moment, he was looking inside the books he was binding. Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations in Chemistry" delighted him; and when he was given the "Encyclopedia Britannica" to bind, the article on Electricity seemed a treasure-house of wonders. He soon made an electrical machine,--not an expensive one,--simply a glass vial, and other apparatus of a similar kind; and afterwards with a real cylinder. These cost only a few pence a week, but they gave a vast amount of pleasure to the blacksmith's son. One day he saw in a shop-window a notice that a Mr. Tatum was to give at his own house some lectures on Natural Philosophy. The charge for each was twenty-five cents. No bookseller's apprentice would have such an amount of money to spend weekly as that. However, his brother Robert, three years older, himself a blacksmith, with some pride, perhaps, that Michael was interested in such weighty matters, furnished the money, and a lodger at the home of the bookseller taught him drawing, so that he might be able, in taking notes, to illustrate the experiments. He attended the lectures, wrote them out carefully in a clear hand, bound them in four volumes, and dedicated them to his employer.