of simple, but high character. An outbuilding attached to their house contained benches, blacksmith’s forge, and a vice. Here Rowland and his brother spent much spare time and cash, which latter he remarks was very scanty. “Ever since I can remember,” he writes, “I have had a taste for mechanics, but the best mechanician wants materials and materials cost money,” and this want caused his brother and himself on Good Friday morning to turn tradesmen. They had been sent with a basket to buy a quantity of hot cross buns for the family and as they went along were much amused by the itinerant vendors, who were calling out, as was the custom in Birmingham then,

“Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns! One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns,
Sugar ’em, and butter ’em, and clap ’em in your muns, one a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns.”

On their way home the boys in the pure spirit of fun began to repeat the cry, Matthew, the elder, being a capable mimic; and to their surprise they found the public respond to their offers, the result being that the youngsters soon “sold out,” and had to return for more to the wholesale establishment, the difference in this case between buying and selling being, as is usual, very well worth the trouble. When the family lived at Hill Top, his mother presented Rowland with a portion of the garden for his own use, covered with horehound, which he was about to root out to make way for his flowers, when he was given to understand that the horehound possessed a monetary value. Immediately on discovering this, he cut it up carefully, tied it in bundles, and borrowing a basket from his mother started off to the market-place, where he took up his position with all the air of a regular trader, but was saved the bother of retail dealing by disposing of his entire stock for eightpence to a woman standing near, who he presumed made a hundred per cent. by the transaction, though with true business tact she complained of her purchase, and told him to tell his mother, “she must tie up bigger bunches next time.” The proceeds of the sale went to purchase some tools and materials for the mechanical contrivances spoken of.

The early years of Benjamin Franklin (one of a family of seventeen) were uncongenially spent with his father, a soap-boiler and tallow-chandler, and his brother, a printer. When seventeen years old he sold his books and took a passage from Boston to New York, whence he was advised to proceed to Philadelphia in search of work. On arriving there he tells us that he was “fatigued with walking, rowing, and the want of sleep, and very hungry: my whole stock of cash consisted in a single dollar, and about a shilling in copper coin, which I gave to the boatmen for my passage. At first they refused it, on account of my having rowed: but I insisted on their taking it. Man is sometimes more generous when he has little money than when he has plenty, perhaps to prevent his being thought to have but little. I walked towards the top of the street, gazing about till near Market Street, where I met a boy with bread. I had often made a meal of dry bread, and inquiring where he had bought it, I went immediately to the baker’s he directed me to. I asked for biscuits, meaning such as we had in Boston. That sort it seems was not made in Philadelphia. I then asked for a threepenny loaf, and was told they had none. Not knowing the different prices, nor the names of the different sorts of bread, I told him to give me three pennyworth of any sort. He gave me accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surprised at the quantity, but took it; and having no room in my pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other. Thus I went up Market Street, as far as Fourth Street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife’s father, when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then I turned and went down Chestnut Street, and part of Walnut Street, eating my roll all the way, and coming round, found myself again at Market Street Wharf, near the boat I came in, to which I went for a draught of the river water; gave my other rolls to a woman and her child that came down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther. Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by this time had many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking the same way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the great Meeting House of the Quakers, near the market. I sat down among them, and after looking round awhile and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy through labour and want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and continued so till the meeting broke up, when some one was kind enough to rouse me. This, therefore, was the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia.”

A strange beginning to the career of one who, in addition to his valuable discoveries in electricity, lived to attain the highest honours his country could bestow, and to be the ambassador to foreign countries; whose marvellous intelligence carried out diplomatic undertakings which undoubtedly affected the destinies of nations. It is interesting to note, now that electricity plays such a leading part in the inventions of the day, that when Franklin made his discovery of the identity of lightning and electricity, it was sneered at, and people asked, “Of what use is it?” To which he replied, “What is the use of a child? It may become a man.”

William Cobbett is another example of the wonderful results to be attained by temperance, frugality, and unflagging industry, who, originally an uninteresting yokel, rose to be a power in the land, to edit political papers, to write political pamphlets (one of which had a circulation of 100,000), and to pen, amongst other most important matter, a volume of ‘Advice to Young Men,’ which, if followed by the rising generation, could not fail to make them more worthy the name of Englishmen. At the time referred to, when he was eleven years old, he was employed in the Bishop of Winchester’s garden at Farnham Castle, and happening to hear of the royal gardens at Kew, he thought that he should like to be employed there, started off next morning with only the clothes he was wearing, and sixpence halfpenny in his pocket, he arrived at Richmond towards evening, having expended threepence halfpenny on bread and cheese and small beer and as he jogged along tired and weary with his walk of thirty miles he was attracted to a bookseller’s window, in which was displayed a second-hand copy of Swift’s ‘Tale of a Tub,’ price 3d. He expended his remaining coppers on its purchase, sat down in an adjoining field, read till he could see no longer, then putting the book into his pocket he dropped off to sleep by the side of a haystack. In the morning, roused by the birds, he continued his journey to Kew Gardens, where he succeeded in getting engaged by an old Scotch gardener. A year, or two after this, when he was working again in his native town of Farnham, the old idea of getting into a larger field of action came back to him, and while waiting one day for some young women whom he had arranged to escort to Guildford fair, he was tempted by the sight of the London coach, secured the one vacant place, and before he had time to realise the importance of the step, was being whirled away in the direction of the metropolis. When he arrived the next morning at the Saracen’s Head on Ludgate Hill, his possessions amounted to two shillings and sixpence, but fortunately he had managed to interest a hop merchant, one of his fellow-passengers, who took him home, and in the course of a day or two managed to obtain a situation for him in a lawyer’s office. Here he soon discovered that he had made a “miserable exchange,” for his want of skill as a penman made his duties