Here, showing his model to Messrs. Wright, the bankers, he obtained from them an advance of money on the proper condition of their sharing in the profits of the invention. Delay occurring in the completion of the machine, the bankers recommended Arkwright to apply to Jedediah Strutt (ancestor of the present Lord Belper), of Derby, who, with his partner, Reed, had brought out and patented the machine for making ribbed stockings. Strutt at once entered into the matter, and by his help the invention was completed. Thus the foundation of the fortune of the Arkwrights was laid, and thus arose their cotton-mills, and their residence (Wellersley Castle) near Matlock. Arkwright was knighted in the year 1786, and in the same year was High Sheriff of Derbyshire. He died in 1792. Mr. Thorneycroft, who realised an immense fortune in the iron-trade, at the Shrubbery Works, near Wolverhampton, was the son of a working-man, and himself educated to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. In his youth he proved himself a most skilful and trustworthy servant to his employers in the iron-trade; and when about twenty-six years of age commenced a small business on his own account.—Mr. Thomas Wilson, whose work, the “Pitman’s Pay,” had a national reputation, who died at Gateshead in 1858, at the ripe age of eighty-four, after having achieved a large fortune, began life by working in a colliery. At nineteen years of age he was a hewer in the mine. At sixteen he had sought more congenial occupation, in which he might profit by the little culture he had won by the sacrifice of needful rest; but he failed in the attempt, and retired to his darksome drudgery. In time he got to be a schoolmaster; and afterwards the humble pitman became a merchant prince.—Andrews, a famous Mayor of Southampton, passed the first years of his life in utter poverty, working as a farm lad, at threepence a-day, from nine to twelve years of age; then getting employment as a sawyer; next as a blacksmith; but always with aspirations for something better.