“All the schooling I ever had under the master was finished in my
eighth year, when I went to earn my own living in a linen factory.
There was an article of faith in our good home creed about which both
my father and mother were of one mind,—the boys must learn a trade.
So, after six years in the factory, I was apprenticed to the village
blacksmith. I was a hard-working, conscientious boy, but full of
mischief and fond of fun. I had, however, a ravenous appetite for
books. I remember once, when quite small, I stood for a long time
before a shop window with a big English penny in my hand, debating
whether I should spend it for a particular kind of candy, of which I
was very fond, or for a little paper-covered book of travels. At length
I went in and bought the book. At meals I used to read, and even when I
was courting the lass whom I made my wife, I read all the books in her
father’s house. I am surprised she did not give me the mitten, and it
would have served me right, too.
“Books were not only pleasing to me, but were my passion. Give a young
man or maiden a passion for anything,—for books, business, painting,
teaching, farming, mechanics or music, I care not what, and you give
him or her a lever with which to lift their world, and a patent of
nobility, if the thing they do is noble. So I call my reading my
college course. It was not an adequate college nor an adequate course,
and there have been times when I felt a trifle sad that there should
have been no chance for me at a good, all-round education. But there
is a chance in the everlasting hunger to read books, and it is with
reading as it is with eating,—you grow choice when there is a plenty.
You instinctively learn to distinguish what is sweet and wholesome and
what is neither, and then you read as you eat,—only the best.
“A great sorrow came to me in 1849. As a result of it, I found my way
into a Methodist meeting house, and began to express what I felt. From
a few words, uttered standing by my seat in the meeting, I began to
preach at irregular intervals; and when I did, it became the custom,
after a while, for some one to go through the village, ringing a bell
and calling out: ‘The blacksmith is going to preach this morning.’
The working people came to hear me because I was one of themselves.
Then they would have me preach regularly,—at nothing a Sunday and find
myself.
“Sometimes I would forget the flight of time and preach for two
hours or more. As I look back upon the poor mortals who sat under my
ministrations for such a length of time, I am reminded of the judge
who, when asked how long a sermon ought to last, replied: ‘About twenty
minutes, with leanings to the side of mercy.’”