Captains of Industry by James Parton (best english books to read for beginners TXT) 📖
- Author: James Parton
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"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."
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
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