been formally apprenticed to him; and if he had gone into the city business afterwards, I should either have been passed over to his successor at Leighton, or my training would have been completed in London. This latter, though perhaps better financially, would have been far worse for me mentally and physically, since this wholesale business was the most monotonous and mechanical possible, as I learned some years afterwards when I visited the London office. To my surprise I then found that the business, which brought in a clear profit of about £1200 a year, had no factory, no machinery, no sign of watchmaking except in a very small room behind the office, where a single workman examined and tested the various portions of the watches as they were brought in by outside piece-workers, the whole business being thus carried on in two small rooms in Bunhill Row. The movements of the watches dealt in were purchased in Coventry, where the various kinds in general use were designed, the separate parts cast, machine-cut, and filed to their proper gauges, and put together. The mainsprings and balance-springs, chains, hands, dials, and cases were usually purchased separately; and for each class of watch a fitter was employed, whose business it was to put the parts together, find out any small defects, and correct them by hand, while any larger defect in any particular part was sent back to the workman or manufacturer responsible for it. The man at the office made a final examination of the completed watches, tested their performance, corrected any minute defect that was discoverable, and finally, in consultation with one of the firm, determined the grade or quality of the watch and the consequent price. What I should have learnt there would have been how to fit a watch together, how to test it for definite defects, how to judge of the design and workmanship, how to keep accounts, pay the workmen, and probably to act as a traveller for the firm. But even if my health would have stood the office-work I should never have succeeded as a man of business, for which I am not fitted by nature. I rather think that this particular firm was the last which carried on business in so old-fashioned a way, as the good-will was, I believe, sold some thirty years later, when

Mr. Matthews retired. My short experience as a shopboy and watchmaker, and the association with a man of Mr. Matthews's extensive knowledge in certain departments of mechanics and engineering, no doubt helped in the all-round development of my character, although I did not learn anything of much practical use in my after-life.

CHAPTER X

KINGTON AND RADNORSHIRE

IN the autumn of 1839 my brother came to Leighton to take me away, and in a day or two we started for Herefordshire, going by the recently opened railroad to Birmingham, where we visited an old friend of my brother's, a schoolmaster, whose name I forget, and who I remember showed us with some pride how his school was warmed by hot-water pipes, then somewhat unusual. We then went on by coach through Worcester to Kington, a small town of about two thousand inhabitants, only two miles from the boundary of Radnorshire. It is pleasantly situated in a hilly country, and has a small stream flowing through it. Just beyond the county boundary, on the road to Old and New Radnor, there is an isolated craggy hill called the Stanner Rocks, which, being a very hard kind of basalt very good for road-metal, was being continually cut away for that purpose. It was covered with scrubby wood, and was the most picturesque object in the immediately surrounding country.

We obtained board and lodging at the house of a gunmaker, Mr. Samuel Wright, a jolly little man, who reminded me of the portrait of the immortal Mr. Pickwick, and who, on account of his rotundity, was commonly known in the town as Alderman Wright. Mrs. Wright was, on the contrary, very thin and angular. They were equally different in their characters; he was very slow of speech, but very fond of telling stories of his early life, usually very commonplace, and told in such a way as to be dreadfully wearisome. After every few words he would stop, to let them sink in, then utter a few more with another stop, and all mixed up with so many "says I's" and “says he's," and "that's to say's," and little digressions about other people, that it was usually impossible to make out

what he was driving at. Mrs. Wright, on the other hand, was a great and rather voluble talker, and she would often interpose with, "Now, Samiwell, you don't tell that right," and, of course, that would only lengthen out the story. She was a very active woman, a great scrubber and cleaner, and unusually fond of fresh air; but these good qualities were sometimes inconvenient, as we all sat in a small room behind the shop, which had three or four doors in it, which we usually found open, and had to shut every time we came in. There was, in fact, such a constant draught in this room that I jokingly suggested a small windmill being put up, which might be used to grind coffee, but she always said that it was the warmest room in the house. Mr. Wright also seemed to enjoy fresh air and water to an unusual degree in those days, for early every morning, winter and summer, he would come down undressed into his little back yard, and there pour cold water all over his body, then scrub himself with a rough towel, put on his underclothing, and return upstairs to finish his toilet. But Mrs. Wright was an excellent cook, and gave us very good meals, and the alderman was very goodnatured, let me look on while he cleaned and repaired guns, and once, when I went with some friends to shoot young rooks, he lent me an excellent double-barrelled gun for the occasion; and these good qualities made up for the little eccentricities of both of them, who, though so different in some respects, were evidently very attached to each other, and never quarrelled. Mrs. Wright used to be fond of saying how dreadful it would be if Samiwell should die first after they had lived together so many years.

Our employers, two brothers, were also well-contrasted characters. The elder, Mr. Morris Sayce, was a rather tall, grey-haired man of serious aspect and rather silent and uncommunicative manner. He, I believe, devoted himself chiefly to valuations and estate agency. The younger partner, Mr. William Sayce, was a small, active, dark-haired man, rather talkative and fond of a joke, and as he attended to the surveying business, we saw most of him, and found him a pleasant superior. Both were married and had families of

grown-up sons and daughters. They were very hospitable, and we were several times invited to dine or to evening parties at their houses, where we met some of the chief people in the town.

The offices were situated in a small house in a rather narrow street, the ground-floor being occupied by the partners' private office and a clerk's room, while a large room above was the chief map-drawing room, containing a large table ten or twelve feet long by five or six wide, used for mounting drawing paper on canvas for large maps, with some smaller tables and desks, while other rooms were used chiefly for writing or store-rooms. There were a good many employes besides ourselves. The chief draughtsman and head of the office in the absence of the principals was named Stephen Pugh, a thorough Welshman in appearance and speech, and a very pleasant and good-natured man, rather fond of poetry and general literature. The next marked character was a rather tall Irishman, a surveyor, who had the unconscious humour of his race, and was besides looked upon as somewhat of a philosopher. One evening, I remember, after work was over at the office, he undertook to give us an address on Human Nature or some such subject, which consisted of a rather prosy exposition of the ideas of Aristotle and the medieval schoolmen on human physiology, without the least conception of the science of the subject at the time he was speaking. There were also a copying clerk, and two or three articled pupils, one or two about my own age, who helped to keep the office lively. In a solitary letter, accidentally preserved, written at this time to my earliest friend, George Silk, I find the following passage which well expresses the pleasure I felt in getting back to land-surveying :

"I think you would like land-surveying, about half indoors and half outdoors work. It is delightful on a fine summer's day to be (literally) cutting all over the country, following the chain and admiring the beauties of nature, breathing the fresh and pure air on the hills, or in the noontide heat enjoying our luncheon of bread-and-cheese in a pleasant valley by the side of a rippling brook. Sometimes, indeed, it