I cannot promise you flowing periods, for of the rules of composition I know nothing; my grammar is uncertain, and as to spelling, why, I often have to turn to my dear wife and ask, ‘Margaret, how do you spell such and such a word?’ and she always knows; she is ever so much better than a dictionary. But, alas! before twelve years of age I was at work fourteen hours a day in an iron foundry in good old Staffordshire. Three farthings per week my father paid for me during the few years I went to school; it was a penny a week school, but they made a reduction on a quantity: two brothers for three halfpence, three for twopence, and so on. There was a large family of boys at our house, so if I could have gone to school a few more years I should have gone almost for nothing, and dad would have saved something. But he evidently thought I could earn something, and littles were useful then, so at the age stated I found myself in the foundry. It is now the fashion, I know, to make light of the schools of those days, and certainly there was much about them to provoke wonder; but I never hear the pedagogues of those times sneered at without feeling a desire to show fight on their behalf. They had their own way of doing things, but personally I doubt if they are done much better now, with all our resources. Perhaps they could not teach much, but they taught it well, and they had a power of instilling into boys a love of knowledge, which is perhaps even better than knowledge itself; for their boys were not in a great hurry to forget what they had learned, but rather sought to add to it after leaving school. What if they did use the cane freely? I never knew a boy get it but what he richly deserved it, and with it all the schoolmaster and his boys were much better friends, and a much better influence was exercised in those days than I am afraid is the case now. The schoolmaster knew his boys then, and had a comparatively free hand in teaching them. If he found a boy who learned quickly, he advanced him without waiting for the end of the year, regardless of examination, and this produced a spirit of emulation among the boys. Every Friday afternoon those boys who had worked well during the week were allowed ‘recreation’--in the winter by means of chess and draughts, both of which he taught us; in the summer-time he would take an occasional walk with us.