attracted by Edward's remarkable and self-sacrificing life, determined
to write the good shoemaker's biography while he was still alive.
Edward himself gave Dr. Smiles full particulars as to his early days
and his later struggles; and that information the genial biographer
wove into a delightful book, from which all the facts here related have
been borrowed. The "Life of a Scotch Naturalist" attracted an immense
deal of attention when it was first published, and led many people,
scientific or otherwise, to feel a deep interest in the man who had
thus made himself poor for the love of nature. The result was such a
spontaneous expression of generous feeling towards Edward that he was
enabled to pass the evening of his days not only in honour, but also in
substantial ease and comfort.
And shall we call such a life as this a failure? Shall we speak of it
carelessly as unsuccessful? Surely not. Edward had lived his life
happily, usefully, and nobly; he had attained the end he set before
himself; he had conquered all his difficulties by his indomitable
resolution; and he lived to see his just reward in the respect and
admiration of all those whose good opinion was worth the having. If he
had toiled and moiled all the best days of his life, at some work,
perhaps, which did not even benefit in any way his fellow-men; if he
had given up all his time to enriching himself anyhow, by fair means or
foul; if he had gathered up a great business by crushing out
competition and absorbing to himself the honest livelihood of a dozen
other men; if he had speculated in stocks and shares, and piled up at
last a vast fortune by doubtful transactions, all the world would have
said, in its unthinking fashion, that Mr. Edward was a wonderfully
successful man. But success in life does not consist in that only, if
in that at all. Edward lived for an aim, and that aim he amply
attained. He never neglected his home duties or his regular work; but
in his stray moments he found time to amass an amount of knowledge
which rendered him the intellectual equal of men whose opportunities
and education had been far more fortunate than his own. The pleasure
he found in his work was the real reward that science gave him. All his
life long he had that pleasure: he saw the fields grow green in spring,
the birds build nests in early summer, the insects flit before his eyes
on autumn evenings, the stoat and hare put on their snow-white coat to
his delight in winter weather. And shall we say that the riches he
thus beheld spread ever before him were any less real or less
satisfying to a soul like his than the mere worldly wealth that other
men labour and strive for? Oh no. Thomas Edward was one of those who
work for higher and better ends than outward show, and verily he had
his reward. The monument raised up to that simple and earnest working
shoemaker in the "Life of a Scotch Naturalist" is one of which any
scientific worker in the whole world might well be proud. In his old
age, he had the meed of public encouragement and public recognition,
the one thing that the world at large can add to a scientific worker's
happiness; and his name will be long remembered hereafter, when those
of more pretentious but less useful labourers are altogether forgotten.
How many men whom the world calls successful might gladly have
End of Project Gutenberg's Biographies of Working Men, by Grant Allen