PROGRESS.
"Bless me, lad, another poond o' candles! I never did hear o' sich
waste," Mrs. Haden exclaimed as Jack entered the cottage on a winter's
afternoon, two years and a half after he had gone into the pit. "Another
poond o' candles, and it was only last Monday as you bought the
last--nigh two candles a night. Thou wilt kill thyself sitting up
reading o' nights, and thy eyes will sink i' thy head, and thou'lt be as
blind as a bat afore thou'rt forty."
"I only read up to eleven, mother, that gives me six hours abed, and as
thou know, six for a man, seven for a woman, is all that is needful; and
as to the expense, as dad lets me keep all my earnings save five bob a
week--and very good o' him it is; I doan't know no man in the pit as
does as much--why, I ha' plenty o' money for my candles and books, and
to lay by summat for a rainy day."
"Aye, aye, lad, I know thou be'st not wasteful save in candles; it's thy
health I thinks o'."
"Health!" Jack laughed; "why, there ain't a lad in the pit as strong as
I am of my age, and I ha' never ailed a day yet, and doan't mean to."
"What ha' ye been doing all the arternoon, Jack?"
"I ha' been sliding in the big pond wi' Harry Shepherd and a lot o'
others. Then Dick Somers, he knocked down Harry's little sister Fan, as
she came running across th' ice, and larfed out when she cried--a great
brute--so I licked he till he couldn't see out o' his eyes."
"He's bigger nor thee, too," Mrs. Haden said admiringly.
"Aye, he's bigger," Jack said carelessly, "but he ain't game, Dick
ain't; loses his temper, he does, and a chap as does that when he's
fighting ain't o' no account. But I must not stand a clappeting here;
it's past six, and six is my time."
"Have your tea first, Jack, it's a' ready; but I do believe thou'dst go
wi'out eating wi'out noticing it, when thou'st got thy books in thy
head."
Jack sat down and drank the tea his mother poured out for him, and
devoured bread and butter with a zest that showed that his appetite was
unimpaired by study. As soon as he had finished he caught up his candle,
and with a nod to Mrs. Haden ran upstairs to his room.
Jack Simpson's craze for learning, as it was regarded by the other lads
of Stokebridge, was the subject of much joking and chaff among them. Had
he been a shy and retiring boy, holding himself aloof from the sports
of his mates, ridicule would have taken the place of joking, and
persecution of chaff. But Jack was so much one of themselves, a leader
in their games, a good fellow all round, equally ready to play or to
fight, that the fact that after six o'clock he shut himself up in his
room and studied, was regarded as something in the nature of a humorous
joke.
When he had first begun, his comrades all predicted that the fit would
not last, and that a few weeks would see the end of it; but weeks and
months and years had gone by, and Jack kept on steadily at the work he
had set himself to do. Amusement had long died away, and there grew up
an unspoken respect for their comrade.
"He be a rum 'un, be Jack," they would say; "he looves games, and can
lick any chap his age anywhere round, and yet he shoots himself oop and
reads and reads hours and hours every day, and he knows a heap, Bull-dog
does." Not that Jack was in the habit of parading his acquirements;
indeed he took the greatest pains to conceal them and to show that in no
respect did he differ from his playfellows.
The two hours which he now spent twice a week with Mr. Merton, and his
extensive reading, had modified his rough Staffordshire dialect, and
when with his master he spoke correct English almost free of
provincialisms, although with his comrades of the pit he spoke as they
spoke, and never introduced any allusion to his studies. All questions
as to his object in spending his evenings with his books were turned
aside with joking answers, but his comrades had accidentally discovered
that he possessed extraordinary powers of calculation. One of the lads
had vaguely said that he wondered how many buckets of water there were
in the canal between Stokebridge and Birmingham, a distance of eighteen
miles, and Jack, without seeming to think of what he was doing, almost
instantaneously gave the answer to the question. For a moment all were
silent with surprise.
"I suppose that be a guess, Jack, eh?" Fred Orme asked.
"Noa," Jack said, "that's aboot roight, though I be sorry I said it; I
joost reckoned it in my head."
"But how didst do that, Jack?" his questioner asked, astonished, while
the boys standing round stared in silent wonder.
"Oh! in my head," Jack said carelessly; "it be easy enough to reckon in
your head if you practise a little."
"And canst do any sum in thy head, Jack, as quick as that?"
"Not any sum, but anything easy, say up to the multiplication or
division by eight figures."
"Let's try him," one boy said.
"All right, try away," Jack said. "Do it first on a bit of paper, and
then ask me."
The boys drew off in a body, and a sum was fixed upon and worked out
with a great deal of discussion.
At last, after a quarter of an hour's work, when all had gone through it
and agreed that it was correct, they returned and said to him, "Multiply
324,683 by 459,852." Jack thought for a few seconds and then taking the
pencil and paper wrote down the answer: 149,306,126,916.
"Why, Jack, thou be'est a conjurer," one exclaimed, while the others
broke out into a shout of astonishment.
From that time it became an acknowledged fact that Jack Simpson was a
wonder, and that there was some use in studying after all; and after
their games were over they would sit round and ask him questions which
they had laboriously prepared, and the speed and accuracy of his answers
were a never-failing source of wonder to them.
As to his other studies they never inquired; it was enough for them that
he could do this, and the fact that he could do it made them proud of
him in a way, and when put upon by the pitmen it became a common retort
among them, "Don't thou talk, there's Jack Simpson, he knows as much as
thee and thy mates put together. Why, he can do a soom as long as a
slaate as quick as thou'd ask it."
Jack himself laughed at his calculating powers, and told the boys that
they could do the same if they would practise, believing what he said;
but in point of fact this was not so, for the lad had an extraordinary
natural faculty for calculation, and his schoolmaster was often
astonished by the rapidity with which he could prepare in his brain long
and complex calculations, and that in a space of time little beyond that
which it would take to write the question upon paper.
So abnormal altogether was his power in this respect that Mr. Merton
begged him to discontinue the practice of difficult calculation when at
work.
"It is a bad thing, Jack, to give undue prominence to one description of
mental labour, and I fear that you will injure your brain if you are
always exercising it in one direction. Therefore when in the pit think
over other subjects, history, geography, what you will, but leave
calculations alone except when you have your books before you."