At a proper age, the boy was sent to the Leeds grammar-school, where he received, it is supposed, the largest part of his school instruction. In geometry and arithmetic he made very rapid progress; but, as is the case with most clever and industrious boys, he learned more at home than at school. Every leisure moment was occupied by his tools and machines. He acquired, in time, a mechanical dexterity and ingenuity which were really surprising, and availed him in the performance of some amusing surprises. Thus, it happened that some mechanics came into the neighbourhood to erect a "fire-engine," as the steam-engine was then called, for the purpose of pumping water from the Garforth coal-mines, and day after day Smeaton visited the spot for the purpose of watching their operations. Carefully examining their methods, he made use of the knowledge so acquired to construct a miniature engine at home, appropriately equipped with pumps and other apparatus; and he even succeeded in setting it in motion before the colliery engine was completed. He first tried its powers upon one of the fish-ponds in front of the house at Austhorpe, which he quickly contrived to pump dry, and so killed all the fish in it, greatly to the surprise as well as the annoyance of his father. Working on in this way, with assiduous application, young Smeaton, by the time he had arrived at his fifteenth year, had made a turning-lathe, on which he turned wood and ivory; and it was his delight to make presents of little boxes and other articles of his own manufacture to his friends. He also learned to work in metals, which he fused and forged without any assistance; and by the age of eighteen he handled his tools as dexterously as any regular smith or joiner. [Sidenote: Always at work.] "In the year 1742," says Mr. Holmes, his biographer and friend, "I spent a month at his father's house; and being intended myself for a mechanical employment, and a few years younger than he was, I could not but view his works with astonishment. He forged his iron and steel, and melted his metal. He had tools of every sort for working in wood, ivory, and metals. He had made a lathe, by which he cut a perpetual screw in brass--a thing little known at that day, and which, I believe, was the invention of Mr. Henry Hindley of York, with whom I served my apprenticeship. Mr. Smeaton soon became acquainted with him, and spent many a night at Mr. Hindley's house till daylight, conversing on these subjects." [Sidenote: Removal to London.]