about his ninth year to a shoemaker,--a violent, disreputable character,
who made ruthless war upon the lad's birds and reptiles, searching his
pockets for them, and killing them whenever found. The lad bore this
misery for three years, and then his patience being exhausted, and
having in his pocket the sum of seven pence, he ran away and walked a
hundred miles into the country to the house of one of his uncles. His
uncle received him kindly, entertained him a day or two, and gave him
eighteen pence, upon which the boy returned home, and made a bargain
with his master by which he received small wages and had complete
control of his leisure time. At eighteen we may regard him as fairly
launched upon life, a journeyman shoemaker, able to earn in good times
nine shillings a week by laboring from six in the morning till nine at
night. At that time all mechanics worked more hours than they do at
present, and particularly shoemakers, whose sedentary occupation does
not expend vitality so rapidly as out-of-door trades. And what made his
case the more difficult was, he was a thorough-going Scotchman, and
consequently a strict observer of Sunday. Confined though he was to his
work fifteen hours a day, he abstained on principle from pursuing his
natural studies on the only day he could call his own.
He was a night-bird, this Thomas Edward; and as in Scotland the twilight
lasts till ten in the evening and the day dawns at three in the morning,
there were some hours out of the twenty-four which he could employ, and
did employ, in his rambles. At twenty-three he fell in love with a
pretty girl, and married her, his income being still but nine and
sixpence a week. His married life was a happy one, for his wife had the
good sense to make no opposition to his darling pursuits, and let him
fill their cottage and garden with as many creatures as he chose, not
even scolding him for his very frequent absences during the night. Some
one asked her recently about this, and her reply was:--
"Weel, he took such an interest in beasts that I didna compleen.
Shoemakers were then a very drucken set, but his beasts keepit him frae
them. My mon's been a sober mon all his life, and he never negleckit his
wark. Sae I let him be."--
Children were born to them, eleven in all, and yet he found time to
learn to write, to read some books, and to increase constantly his
knowledge of nature. In order to procure specimens for his collection,
he bought an old shot-gun for a sum equal to about a dollar,--such a
battered old piece that he had to tie the barrel to the stock with a
piece of string. A cow's horn served for his powder; he measured his
charge with a tobacco pipe, and carried his shot in a paper-bag. About
nine in the evening, carrying his supper with him, he would start out
and search the country round for animals and rare plants as long as he
could see; then eat his supper and lie down and sleep till the light
returned, when he would continue his hunting till it was time for work.
Many a fight he had in the darkness with badgers and pole-cats.
When he had thus been employed eight or nine years, his collection
contained two thousand specimens of animals and two thousand plants, all
nicely arranged in three hundred cases made with his own hands. Upon
this collection he had founded hopes of getting money upon which to
pursue his studies more extensively. So he took it to Aberdeen, six cart
loads in all, accompanied by the whole family,--wife and five children.
It needs scarcely to be said that his collection did not succeed, and he
was obliged to sell the fruit of nine years' labor for twenty pounds.
Nothing daunted, he returned to his cobbler's stall, and began again to
collect, occasionally encouraged by a neighboring naturalist, and
sometimes getting a little money for a rare specimen. Often he tried to
procure employment as a naturalist, but unsuccessfully, and as late as
1875 we find him writing thus:--
"As a last and only remaining resource, I betook myself to my old and
time-honored friend, a friend of fifty years' standing, who has never
yet forsaken me nor refused help to my body when weary, nor rest to my
limbs when tired--my well-worn cobbler's stool. And although I am now
like a beast tethered to his pasture, with a portion of my faculties
somewhat impaired, I can still appreciate and admire as much as ever the
beauties and wonders of nature as exhibited in the incomparable works of
our adorable Creator."
These are cheerful words to come from an old man who has enriched the
science of his country by additions to its sources of knowledge. In
another letter, written a year or two since, he says:--
"Had the object of my life been money instead of nature, I have no
hesitation in saying that by this time I would have been a rich man. But
it is not the things I have done that vex me so much as the things I
have not done. I feel that I could have accomplished so much more. I had
the will, but I wanted the means."
It is in this way that such men feel toward the close of their lives.
Thomas Edward still lives, in his sixty-seventh year, at Banff, in
Scotland, rich in his pension of fifty pounds a year, which is more than
twice as much as the income he had when he supported by his labor a wife
and eleven children. Even his specimens now command a price, and he is
every way a prosperous gentleman. It seems a pity that such men cannot
have their precious little fifty pounds to begin with, instead of to end
with. But who could pick them out? What mortal eye can discern in a man
the _genuine_ celestial fire before he has proved its existence by the
devotion of a lifetime to his object? And even if it could be discerned
in a young man, the fifty pounds a year might quench it.
ROBERT DICK,
BAKER AND NATURALIST.
The most northern county of Scotland is Caithness, a wild region of
mountain, marsh, and rock-ribbed headlands, in which the storms of the
Atlantic have worn every variety of fantastic indentation. Much of the
land has been reclaimed in modern days by rich proprietors. There are
manufactures of linen, wool, rope, and straw, besides important
fisheries; so that forty thousand people now find habitation and
subsistence in the county. There are castles, too, ancient and
modern,--some in ruins, some of yesterday,--the summer home of wealthy
people from the south.
The coast is among the most picturesque in the world, bearing a strong
resemblance to the coast of Maine. The reader, perhaps, has never seen
the coast of Maine. Then let him do so speedily, and he will know, as he
sails along its bold headlands, and its seamed walls of rock rising here
and there into mountains, how the coast of Caithness looked to one of
the noblest men that ever lived in it, Robert Dick, baker of Thurso.
Thurso is the most northern town of this most northern county. It is
situated on Thurso Bay, which affords a good harbor, and it has thus
grown to be a place of three or four thousand inhabitants. From this
town the Orkney Islands can be seen, and a good walker can reach in a
day's tramp Dunnet Head, the lofty promontory which ends the Island.
Here lived, labored, studied, and died, Robert Dick, a man whose name
should never be pronounced by intelligent men but with respect.
He did not look like a hero. When the boys of the town saw him coming
out of his baker's shop, in a tall stove-pipe hat, an old-fashioned
dress coat and jean trousers, they used to follow him to the shore, and
watch him as he walked along it with his eyes fixed upon the ground.
Suddenly he would stop, fall upon his hands and knees, crawl slowly
onward, and then with one hand catch something on the sand; an insect,
perhaps. He would stick it upon a pin, put it in his hat, and go on his
way; and the boys would whisper to one another that there was a mad
baker in Thurso. Once he picked up a nut upon the beach, and said to his
companion:--
"That has been brought by the ocean current and the prevailing winds all
the way from one of the West India Islands."
He made the most astonishing journeys about that fag end of the universe
in the pursuit of knowledge. We read of his walking thirty-two miles in
a soaking rain to the top of a mountain, and bringing home only a plant
of white heather. On another day he walked thirty-six miles to find a
peculiar kind of fern. Again he walked for twenty-four hours in hail,
rain, and wind, reaching home at three o'clock in the morning. But at
seven he was up and ready for work as usual. He carried heavy loads,
too, when he went searching for minerals and fossils. In one of his
letters we read:--
"Shouldering an old poker, a four-pound hammer, and with two chisels in
my pocket, I set out.... What hammering! what sweating! Coat off; got my
hands cut to bleeding."
In another letter he speaks of having "three pounds of iron chisels in
his trousers pocket, a four-pound hammer in one hand and a
fourteen-pound sledge-hammer in the other, and his old beaver hat filled
with paper and twine."
But who and what was this man, and why was he performing these laborious
journeys? Robert Dick, born in 1811, was the son of an excise officer,
who gave his children a hard stepmother when Robert was ten years old.
The boy's own mother, all tenderness and affection, had spoiled him for
such a life as he now had to lead under a woman who loved him not, and
did not understand his unusual cast of character, his love of nature,
his wanderings by the sea, his coming home with his pockets full of wet
shells and his trousers damaged by the mire. She snubbed him; she
whipped him. He bore her ill treatment with wonderful patience; but it
impaired the social side of him forever. Nearly fifty years after he
said to one of his few friends:--
"All my naturally buoyant, youthful spirits were broken. To this day I
feel the effects. I cannot shake them off. It is this that still makes
me shrink from the world."
At thirteen he escaped from a home blighted by this woman, and went
apprentice to a baker; and when he was out of his time served as a
journeyman for three years; then set up a small business for himself in
Thurso. It was a very small business indeed; for at that day bread was a
luxury which many people of Caithness only allowed themselves on
Sundays; their usual fare being oatmeal. He was a baker all the days of
his life, and his business never increased so as to oblige him to employ
even a baker's boy. He made his bread, his biscuit, and his gingerbread
without any assistance, and when it was done, it was sold in his little
shop by an old housekeeper, who lived with him till he died.
The usual course of his day was this: He was up in the morning very
early, at any time from three to six, according to his plans for the
after part of the day. He kneaded his bread, worked the dough into
loaves, put the whole into the oven, waited till it was baked, and drew
it out. His work was then usually done for the day. The old housekeeper
sold it as it was called for, and, in case her master did not get home
in time, she could set the sponge in the evening. Usually, he could get
away from the bake-shop soon after the middle of the day, and he had
then all the afternoon, the evening, and the night for studying nature
in Caithness. His profits were small, but his wants were few, and during
the greater part of his life he was able to spare a small sum per annum
for the purchase of books.
If this man had enjoyed the opportunities he would have had but for his
mother's death, he might have been one of the greatest naturalists that
ever lived. Nature had given him every requisite: a frame of iron,
Scotch endurance, a poet's enthusiasm, the instinct of not believing
anything in science till he was _sure_ of it, till he had put it to the
test of repeated observation and experiment. Although a great reader, he
derived most of his knowledge directly from nature's self. He began by
merely picking up shells, as a child picks them up, because they were
pretty; until, while still a lad, he had a very complete collection all
nicely arranged in a cabinet and labeled. Youth being past, the shy and
lonely young man began to study botany, which he pursued until he had
seen and felt everything that grew in Caithness. Next he studied
insects, and studied with such zeal that in nine months he had
collected, of beetles alone, two hundred and fifty-six specimens. There
are still in the Thurso museum two hundred and twenty varieties of
bees, and two hundred and forty kinds of butterflies, collected by him.
Early in life he was powerfully attracted to astronomy, and read
everything he could find upon the subject. But he was one of those
students whom books alone can never satisfy; and as a telescope was very
far beyond his means he was obliged to devote himself to subjects more
within his own reach. He contrived out of his small savings to buy a
good microscope, and found it indispensable. Geology was the subject
which occupied him longest and absorbed him most. He pursued it with
untiring and intelligent devotion for thirty years. He found the books
full of mistakes, because, as he said, so many geologists study nature
from a gig and are afraid to get a little mud on their trousers.
"When," said he, "I want to know what a rock is, I go to it; I hammer
it; I dissect it. I then know what it really is.... The science of
geology! No, no; we must just work patiently on, _collect facts_, and in
course of time geology may develop into a science."
I suppose there never was a man whose love of knowledge was more
disinterested. He used to send curious specimens to Hugh Miller, editor
of "The Witness" as well as a geologist, and Mr. Miller would
acknowledge the gifts in his paper; but Robert Dick entreated him not to
do so.
"I am a quiet creature," he wrote, "and do not like to see myself in
print at all. So leave it to be understood who found the old bones, and
let them guess who can."
As long as he was in unimpaired health he continued this way of life
cheerfully enough, refusing all offers of assistance. His brother-in-law
once proposed to send him a present of whiskey.
"No," said he in reply, "spirits never enter this house save when I
cannot help it."
His brother-in-law next offered to send him some money. He answered:--
"God grant you more sense! I want no sovereigns. It's of no use sending
anything down here. Nothing is wanted. Delicacies would only injure
health. _Hardy_ is the word with working people. Pampering does no good,
but much evil."
And yet the latter days of this great-souled man were a woeful tragedy.
He was the best baker in the place, gave full weight, paid for his flour
on the day, and was in all respects a model of fair dealing. But his
trade declined. Competition reduced his profits and limited his sales.
When the great split occurred in Scotland between the old and the free
church, he stuck to the old, merely saying that the church of his
forefathers was good enough for him. But his neighbors and customers
were zealous for the free church; and one day, when the preacher aimed a
sermon at him for taking his walks on Sunday, he was offended, and
rarely went again. And so, for various reasons, his business declined;
some losses befell him; and he injured his constitution by exposure and
exhausting labors in the study of geology.
There were rich and powerful families near by who knew his worth, or
would have known it if they had themselves been worthy. They looked on
and saw the noblest heart in Scotland break in this unequal strife. They
should have set him free from his bake-shop as soon as he had given
proof of the stuff he was made of. He was poet, artist, philosopher,
hero, and they let him die in his bakehouse in misery. After his death
they performed over his body the shameful mockery of a pompous funeral,
and erected in his memory a paltry monument, which will commemorate
their shame as long as it lasts. His name has been rescued from oblivion
by the industry and tact of Samuel Smiles, who, in writing his life, has
revealed to us a rarer and higher kind of man than Robert Burns.
JOHN DUNCAN,
WEAVER AND BOTANIST.
Many young men ask nowadays what is the secret of "success." It were
better to inquire also how to do without success, since that is the
destiny of most of us, even in the most prosperous communities.
Could there be imagined a more complete "failure" than this John Duncan,
a Scottish weaver, always very poor, at last a pauper, short-sighted,
bent, shy, unlettered, illegitimate, dishonored in his home, not
unfrequently stoned by the boys of the roadside, and in every
particular, according to the outward view, a wretched fag-end of human
nature!
Yet, redeemed and dignified by the love of knowledge, he passed, upon
the whole, a joyous and even a triumphant life. He had a pursuit which
absorbed his nobler faculties, and lifted him far above the mishaps and
inconveniences of his lowly lot. The queen of his country took an
interest in his pursuits, and contributed to the ease of his old age.
Learned societies honored him, and the illustrious Charles Darwin
called him "my fellow botanist."
[Illustration: John Duncan]
The mother of John Duncan, a "strong, pretty woman," as he called her,
lived in a poor tenement at Stonehaven, on the Scottish coast, and
supported herself by weaving stockings at her own home, and in the
summer went into the harvest field. He always held his mother in honor
and tenderness, as indeed he ought, for she stood faithfully by the
children she ought not to have borne.
As a boy the future botanist developed an astonishing faculty of
climbing. There was a famous old castle upon the pinnacle of a cliff,
inaccessible except to cats and boys. He was the first to gain access to
the ancient ruin, and after him the whole band of boys explored the
castle, from the deep dungeons to the topmost turret.
His first employment led him directly to what became a favorite pursuit
of his lifetime. By way of adding to the slender gains of his mother, he
extracted the white pith from certain rushes of the region, which made
very good lamp-wicks for the kind of lamps then in use in Scotland.
These wicks of pith he sold about the town in small penny bundles. In
order to get his supply of rushes he was obliged to roam the country far
and wide, and along the banks of streams. When he had gathered as many
as he could carry he would bring them home to be stripped. To the end of
his days, when he knew familiarly every plant that grew in his native
land, he had a particular fondness for all the varieties of rush, and
above all for the kind that gave him his first knowledge.
Then he went to a farmer's to tend cattle, and in this employment he
experienced the hard and savage treatment to which hired boys were so
frequently subjected at that day. Drenched with rain after tending his
herd all day, the brutal farmer would not permit him to go near the fire
to dry his clothes. He had to go to his miserable bed in an out-house,
where he poured the water from his shoes, and wrung out his wet clothes
as dry as he could. In that foggy climate his garments were often as wet
in the morning as he left them in the evening, and so days would pass
without his having a dry thread upon him.
But it did not rain always. Frequently his herd was pastured near the
old castle, which, during the long summer days, he studied more
intelligently, and in time learned all about its history and
construction. And still he observed the flowers and plants that grew
about his feet. It seemed natural to him to observe them closely and to
learn their names and uses.
In due time he was apprenticed to a weaver. This was before the age of
the noisy, steaming factory. Each weaver then worked at home, at his own
loom, and could rent, if he chose, a garden and a field, and keep a cow,
and live a man's life upon his native soil. Again our poor, shy
apprentice had one of the hardest of masters. The boy was soon able to
do the work of a man, and the master exacted it from him. On Saturdays
the loom was usually kept going till midnight, when it stopped at the
first sound of the clock, for this man, who had less feeling for a
friendless boy than for a dog or a horse, was a strict Sabbatarian. In
the depth of the Scotch winter he would keep the lad at the river-side,
washing and wringing out the yarn, a process that required the arms to
be bare and the hands to be constantly wet. His hands would be all
chilblains and frost-bitten.
But again we may say it was not always winter. In the most dismal lot
there are gleams of sunshine. The neighbors pitied and comforted him.
His tyrant's wife was good to him as far as she dared. It was she,
indeed, who inspired him with the determination to learn to read, and
another friendly woman gave him regular instruction. He was sixteen
years old when he learned his alphabet. A school-girl, the daughter of
another weaver, would come into his shop to hear him read his lesson,
and tell him how to pronounce the hard words. This bright, pretty girl
of twelve would take her seat on the loom beside the bashful, lanky boy,
who, with the book close to his eyes and his finger on the page, would
grope his way through the paragraph.
Other children helped him, and he was soon able to get the meanings from
the few books at his command. His solitary walks were still cheered by
his observation of nature, although as yet he did not know there was
such a thing as a science of botany. He could give no account of the
interest he took in plants, except that he "loved the pretty little
things," and liked to know their names, and to classify in his rude way
those that were alike.
The exactions of his despot wore out at length even his astonishing
patience. He ran away at twenty, and entered upon the life which he
lived all the rest of his days, that of a weaver, wandering about
Scotland according to his need of work. At this period he was not the
possessor of a single book relating to his favorite pursuit, and he had
never seen but one, an old-fashioned work of botany and astrology, of
nature and superstition, by the once famous Culpepper. It required extra
work for months, at the low wages of a hand-loom weaver, to get the
money required for the purchase of this book, about five dollars. The
work misled him in many ways, but it contained the names and properties
of many of his favorite herbs. Better books corrected these errors by
and by, and he gradually gathered a considerable library, each volume
won by pinching economy and hard labor.
The sorrow of his life was his most woeful, disastrous marriage. His
wife proved false to him, abandoned his home and their two daughters,
and became a drunken tramp. Every now and then she returned to him,
appealing to his compassion for assistance. I think Charles Dickens must
have had John Duncan's case in his mind when he wrote those powerful
scenes of the poor man cursed with a drunken wife in "Hard Times."
But the more miserable his outward life, the more diligently he resorted
for comfort to his darling plants. For many years he groped in the dark;
but at length he was put upon the right path by one of those
accomplished gardeners so common in Scotland, where the art of gardening
is carried to high perfection. He always sought the friendship of
gardeners wherever he went. Nevertheless he was forty years old before
he became a scientific botanist.
During the rest of his life of forty-four years, besides pursuing his
favorite branch, he obtained a very considerable knowledge of the
kindred sciences and of astronomy. Being obliged to sell his watch in a
time of scarcity, he made for himself a pocket sun-dial, by which he
could tell the time to within seven or eight minutes.
During this period steam was gaining every year upon hand power; his
wages grew less and less; and, as his whole heart was in science, he had
no energy left for seeking more lucrative employment. When he was past
eighty-three he would walk twelve miles or more to get a new specimen,
and hold on his way, though drenched with a sudden storm.
At length, old age and lack of work reduced him to actual suffering for
the necessaries of life. Mr. William Jolly, a contributor to
periodicals, heard his story, sought him out, and found him so poor as
to be obliged to accept out-door relief, of which the old man was
painfully ashamed. He published a brief history of the man and of his
doings in the newspapers.
"The British people," says Voltaire, "may be very stupid, but they know
how to give."
Money rained down upon the old philosopher, until a sum equal to about
sixteen hundred dollars had reached him, which abundantly sufficed for
his maintenance during the short residue of his life. For the first time
in fifty years he had a new and warm suit of clothes, and he again sat
down by his own cheerful fire, an independent man, as he had been all
his life until he could no longer exercise his trade.
He died soon after, bequeathing the money he had received for the
foundation of scholarships and prizes for the encouragement of the study
of natural science among the boys and girls of his country. His valuable
library, also, he bequeathed for the same object.
JAMES LACKINGTON,
SECOND-HAND BOOKSELLER.
It would seem not to be so very difficult a matter to buy an article for
fifty cents and sell it for seventy-five. Business men know, however,
that to live and thrive by buying and selling requires a special gift,
which is about as rare as other special gifts by which men conquer the
world. In some instances, it is easier to make a thing than to sell it,
and it is not often that a man who excels in the making succeeds equally
well in the selling. General George P. Morris used to say:--