The inside does not appear to have received much care or improvement. Originally the windows were much larger than at present. Pitt's window tax, long since repealed, was the direct cause for the reducing of the windows from their former proportions. The illustration gives an excellent idea of its present-day appearance. The building is always an object of extreme interest to visitors to the locality, presenting even now a very picturesque appearance. Image: FIG. 23.--The Hall ith Wood, where the spinning mule was invented. Very soon after the removal of the family to the Hall ith Wood, Samuel's father died. His mother, however, one of the best of women, filled the duties of head of the house with much success, and followed the laborious occupation of farming, and in her leisure moments, did what many housewives of her class did--carded, spun, and wove, in order to provide her family and herself with a decent livelihood. She managed to give what might be termed under the circumstances a most excellent and practical education to her son Samuel; and it may be here remarked, that in many respects he was the exact opposite of his predecessor Arkwright. The latter was certainly a bustling, pushing man of business, while Crompton was a born inventor and recluse, and be it said also, as big a failure, as a business man, as could be well conceived. Of course Arkwright, as is well known, was the opposite of this. The early youth of Crompton was identified with the great progress in the cotton industry of England, and, at fifteen or sixteen years of age, he was to be found assisting his mother during the daytime, while in the evenings he attended night-classes in Bolton, where he made great progress in mathematics. He was so good at the latter subject that he was called "a witch at figures." It may be taken as perfectly natural that a man of the character, training and early associations of Crompton should turn to invention in connection with the cotton industry, especially since the beginning of his association with the trade there had always been a scarcity of weft for the loom which he and his mother operated. The continual efforts of English weavers of that period to produce fine cotton goods to compete with those at that time largely imported from India, led to a great demand for fine yarns, and these the comparatively clumsy fingers of English spinners could not produce in a manner at all equal to the delicate filaments produced by the Hindoos. Kay's invention of the fly shuttle, and the introduction by his son of the drop-box in the loom, had vastly increased the output of the loom, thus increasing the demand for weft and warp to feed it.