"My father then took me into the school, of which he was master, and my education may be said fairly to have begun. My progress, however, was very slow partly owing to ill-health, but more, I must acknowledge, to carelessness and inattention. In fact, during the first four years I was at school, I learnt very little of anything, with the exception of reciting verses, which I seemed to learn without any mental effort. My memory became very retentive. I found that by attentively reading half a page of print, or more, from any of the school-books, I could repeat the whole of it without missing a word. I can scarcely explain how I did it; but I think it was by paying strict attention to the words as words, and forming a mental picture of the paragraphs as they were grouped in the book. Certain, I am, that their sense never made much impression on me, for, when questioned by the teacher, I was always sent to the bottom of the class, though apparently I had learned my exercise to perfection. "When I was twelve years old, I made the acquaintance of a very ingenious boy, who came to our school. Samuel Bridge was a born mechanic. Though only a year older than myself, such was his ability in the use of tools, that he could construct a model of any machine that he saw. He awakened in me a love of mechanical construction, and together we made models of colliery winding-frames, iron-rolling mills, trip-hammers, and water-wheels. Some of them were not mere toys, but constructed to scale, and were really good working models. This love of mechanical construction has never left me, and I shall always remember with affection Samuel Bridge, who first taught me to use the hammer and file. The last I heard of him was in 1875, when he passed his examination as a schoolmaster, in honours, and was at the head of his list. "During the next two years, when between twelve and fourteen, I made comparatively slow progress at school. I remember having to write out the fourth commandment from memory. The teacher counted twenty-three mistakes in ten lines of my writing. It will be seen from this, that, as regards learning, I continued heedless and backward. About this time, my father, who was a good violinist, took me under his tuition. He made me practice on the violin about an hour and a half a day. I continued this for a long time. But the result was failure. I hated the violin, and would never play unless compelled to do so. I suppose the secret was that I had no 'ear.'