Happily there was in the place, and near enough for the boy to attend it easily, a good day-school upon an old foundation, whose fees were within his father's means. Richard proved a fair student and became a great reader. But he took such an intelligent and practical interest in the work he saw going on at home, that he began, while yet a mere child, to use paste and paper of his own accord. First he made manuscript-books for his work at school, and for the copying of such verses as he took a fancy to in his reading. Then inside the covers of some of these he would make pockets for papers; and so advanced to small portfolios and pocket-books, of which he would make presents to his companions, and sometimes, when more ambitiously successful, to a master. In their construction he used bits of coloured paper and scraps of leather, chiefly morocco, which his father willingly made over to him, watching his progress with an interest quite paternal, and showing a workman's wisdom in this, that only when he saw him in a real difficulty would he come to his aid--as, for instance, when first he struggled with a piece of leather too thick for the bonds of paste, and must be taught how to pare it to the necessary flexibility and compliance. To become able to _make_ something is, I think, necessary to thorough development. I would rather have son of mine a carpenter, a watchmaker, a wood-carver, a shoemaker, a jeweller, a blacksmith, a bookbinder, than I would have him earn his bread as a clerk in a counting-house. Not merely is the cultivation of operant faculty a better education in faculty, but it brings the man nearer to every thing operant; humanity unfolds itself to him the readier; its ways and thoughts and modes of being grow the clearer to both intellect and heart. The poetry of life, the inner side of that nature which comes from him who, on the Sabbath-days even, “worketh hitherto,” rises nearer the surface to meet the eyes of the man who _makes._ What advantage the carpenter of Nazareth gathered from his bench, is the inheritance of every workman, in proportion as he does divine, that is, honest work. Perceiving the faculty of the boy, his father--so let us call John Tuke for the present--naturally thought it well to make him a gift of his trade: it would always be a possession! “Whatever turn things may take,” he would remark to his wife, “the boy will have his bread in his hands. And say what they will, the man who can gather his food off his own bench, or screw it out of his own press, must be a freer man than he who but for his inheritance would have to beg, steal, or die of hunger. And who knows how long the world may permit idlers to fare of its best!” For, after a fashion of his own, Tuke was a philosopher and a politician. But his politics were those of the philosopher, not of the politician.