When he was twenty he went to work at Torquay. Up to this time he had never even seen the inside of a school. He could neither read nor write, in fact he did not know all the letters of the alphabet. One of the small churches in Torquay had an evening class for those who, never having been to school, were anxious to learn. John Davey joined this class and at once began to master the alphabet and to learn to form letters. While he was almost a man in years, and a first-class worker on the farm, he did not know any more about reading or writing than many children of five to-day. The farm where he worked was two miles from Torquay, so early each morning he walked the two miles, worked hard for twelve hours, trudged the two miles home again, and then tackled his studies. Soon he made progress and he bought a New Testament and a dictionary. These two books became his companions. He carried them everywhere he went, and whenever he had a few minutes to spare he began reading one of them. When working in the fields, at lunch hour, he would often crawl under a hawthorn hedge and hold a slice of bread in one hand and the New Testament in the other. The heavy strain soon told on him. He had been a healthy boy. At fifteen he had often carried two hundred and forty-eight pounds of wheat up a flight of stairs. But he broke down in health and had to go home. Before long, however, he was back at his work again and some one gave him a small hymn-book. This gave him great delight. He had now three books, and he read the hymn-book so much that he could recite many hymns from memory. All this time his love for flowers and bees increased. It became the greatest passion of his life. He studied them until he knew more about them than any man in the countryside. He was given a situation in some conservatories and such was his knowledge and willingness to work that by the end of the year he was in charge of the work. One day, a clergyman, who had noticed his eager ambition to get on, suggested that in the United States there were many opportunities for young people. John Davey had never thought of emigrating, but from that day he determined to go to the United States. He had practically no money, but he sold rose trees to get his passage money and at the age of twenty-six he arrived in America and found work as a labourer at Warren, Ohio. There was a good deal of unemployment at the time, but his eagerness to work, and his thorough way of doing things, stood him in good stead, and he was never out of a job.