“While the work was in progress I was attacked with illness, and for a time was confined to the house. It was during this period that the new caps, in all their first brightness, arrived from the brass-founder’s; and as soon as I was a little better I was of course eager to attach them to the cylinder; but the workshop being too cold for an invalid, my patience would have been sorely tried had not my indulgent mother made provision for me in the parlour, by substituting for the hearthrug an old carpet folded in several doubles, so as to prevent the droppings from my ladle from injuring the somewhat better carpet on the floor; and here, the cement being melted over a good fire, the cylinder was duly prepared for mounting. “My simple apparatus was completed in about a year and a-half. I set it to work with no small trepidation, having heard much about the uncertainty of electrical action, and fearing lest my limited means and powers might have left some fatal defect. So great was my uncertainty, that even after giving the machine three or four turns, I still hesitated to apply the decisive test, and great indeed were my pride and joy when my knuckle drew from the conductor its first spark.[26] Downstairs I rushed in quest of sympathy, nor could I be satisfied until my father and many others had witnessed the performance with admiring eyes. A few years afterwards I added some improvements, substituting for the deal frame one of mahogany, procuring a hollow conductor from the tinman’s, made of course according to my own directions, and giving also greater neatness and efficiency to the subordinate parts of the machine and its various adjuncts; and I may add the apparatus, though in a somewhat imperfect state, is still extant. Meanwhile, however, a friend of my father’s, the late Mr. Michael Beasley, a schoolmaster of Stourbridge, who through life showed great affection for me, and to whom I owe much in various ways, having seen the machine in its first simple state, engaged me to make a duplicate for himself, though on a smaller scale. This I accomplished in about six months; and while my outlay amounted to two pounds, I received in payment, for materials and workmanship, the sum of three guineas, which I considered a handsome remuneration, though I have now no doubt that my kind friend would have given me yet more had his means been less restricted.”[27] It was from his father, that his son got his strong love for astronomy, and acquired, as he said, even while a boy, no inconsiderable knowledge of the subject. A few years before his death, he drew up an interesting paper on his astronomical studies.[28] In it he says:—