Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous

The touch of the Queen did no good, for he became blind in one eye; with the other he could not see a friend half a yard off, and his face was sadly disfigured. Being prevented thus from sharing the sports of other boys, much time was spent in reading. He was first taught at a little school kept by Widow Oliver, who years after, when he was starting for Oxford, brought him a present of gingerbread, telling him he was the best scholar she ever had. After a time he studied Latin under a master who "whipped it into him." The foolish teacher would ask the boy the Latin word for candlestick, or some unexpected thing, and then whip him, saying, "This I do to save you from the gallows!"

Naturally indolent, Samuel had to struggle against this tendency. He had, however, the greatest ambition to excel, and to this he attributed his later success. He was also inquisitive, and had a wonderful memory. When he wore short dresses, his mother gave him the Prayer-Book one day, and, pointing to the Collect, said, "You must get this by heart." She went up stairs, but no sooner had she reached the second floor than she heard him following. He could repeat it perfectly, having looked it over but twice. He left school at sixteen, spending two years at home in helping his parents, and studying earnestly. One day, his father, being ill, asked him to go to a neighboring town and take his place in selling books at a stall on market-day. He was proud, and did not go. Fifty years afterward, in his greatness, then an old man, he went to this stall, and, with uncovered head, remained for an hour in the rain where his father had formerly stood, exposed to the sneers of the bystanders and the inclemency of the weather. It showed the repentance of a noble soul for disobedience to a parent.

At nineteen, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, where he acted as servant. He used to go daily to his friend Taylor, and get lectures second-hand, till his feet, showing through his worn-out shoes, were perceived by the students, and he ceased going. A rich young man secretly put a pair of new shoes at his door, which he indignantly threw out of the window. He was willing to work and earn, but would not receive charity. At the end of three years he became so poor that he was obliged to leave college, his father dying soon after.

After various experiences, he sought the position of usher at a school, but was refused because it was thought that the boys would make fun of his ugliness. He finally obtained such a place, was treated with great harshness, and left in a few months. Strange to say, the poor, lonely scholar, only twenty-six, now fell in love with a widow forty-eight years old. After obtaining his mother's consent, he married her, and the union proved a most happy one. With the little money his wife possessed, he started a school, and advertised for pupils; but only three came, and the school soon closed. In despair he determined to try London, and see if an author could there earn his bread. In that great city he lived for some time on nine cents a day. One publisher to whom he applied suggested to him that the wisest course would be to become a porter and carry trunks.

A poem written at this time, entitled "London," for which he received fifty dollars, one line of which was in capital letters,

"SLOW RISES WORTH BY POVERTY DEPRESSED,"

attracted attention; and Pope, who was then at the height of his fame, asked Dublin University to give to the able scholar the degree of M.A., that he might thus be able to take the principalship of a school, and earn three hundred dollars a year; but this was refused. Out of such struggles come heroic souls.

When he was forty, he published the "Vanity of Human Wishes," receiving seventy-five dollars, asserted by many to be the most impressive thing of its kind in the language. The lines, show his struggles. A drama soon after, played by the great actor, David Garrick, brought him nearly a thousand dollars; but the play itself was a failure. When asked by his friends how he felt about his ill success, he replied, "Like the monument," meaning that he continued firm and unmoved, like a column of granite. Fame was coming at last, after he had struggled in London for thirteen years – and what bitterness they had brought!

"There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail,"

For two years he worked almost constantly on a paper called the "Rambler." When his wife said that, well as she had thought of him before, she had never considered him equal to this, he was more pleased than with any praise he ever received. She died three days after the last copy was published, and Johnson was utterly prostrated. He buried himself in hard work in his garret, a most inconvenient room; but he said, "In that room I never saw Mrs. Johnson." Her wedding-ring was placed in a little box, and tenderly kept till his death.

Three years afterward, his great work, his Dictionary, appeared, for which he received eight thousand dollars; but, as he had been obliged to employ six assistants for seven years, he was still poor, but now famous. The Universities of Oxford and Dublin, when he no longer needed their assistance, hastened to bestow their degrees upon him. Even George III. invited him to the royal palace, – a strange contrast to a few years before, when Samuel Johnson was under arrest for a debt of thirty dollars! When asked by Reynolds how he had obtained his accuracy and flow of language in conversation, he replied, "By trying to do my best on every occasion and in every company." About this time his aged mother died, and in the evenings of one week, to defray her funeral expenses, he wrote "Rasselas," and received five hundred dollars for it. He wrote in his last letter to her, "You have been the best mother, and I believe the best woman, in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and beg forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and of all that I have omitted to do well." His last great work was "The Lives of the Poets."

He received now a pension of fifteen hundred dollars a year, for his valuable services to literature, but never used more than four hundred dollars for himself. He took care of a blind woman of whom he said, "She was a friend to my poor wife, and was in the house when she died, she has remained in it ever since," of a mother and daughter dependent upon an old family physician, and of two men whom nobody else would care for. Once when he found a poor woman on the street late at night, he took her home, and kept her till she was restored to health. His pockets were always filled with pennies for street Arabs; and, if he found poor children asleep on a threshold, he would slip money into their hands that, when they awakened, they might buy a breakfast. When a servant was dying who had been in the family for forty-three years, he prayed with her and kissed her, the tears falling down his cheeks. He wrote in his diary, "We kissed and parted – I humbly hope to meet again, and part no more." He held, rightly, that Christianity levels all distinctions of rank.

He was very tender to animals. Once, when in Wales, a gardener brought into the house a hare which had been caught in the potatoes, and was told to give it to the cook. Dr. Johnson asked to have it placed in his arms; then, taking it to the window, he let it go, shouting to it to run as fast as possible. He would buy oysters for his cat, Hodge, that the servants, from seeing his fondness for it, might be led to treat it kindly.

He died at the age of seventy-five, such men as Burke and Reynolds standing by his bedside. Of the latter, he begged that he would "read his Bible, and never paint on Sundays." His last words were to a young lady who had asked his blessing: "God bless you, my dear!" He was buried with appropriate honors in Westminster Abbey, and monuments are erected to him in St. Paul's Cathedral, and at Lichfield. The poor boy, nearly blind, became "the brightest ornament of the eighteenth century."

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

On a low slab in a quiet spot, just north of the Church of Knight Templars, in London, are the simple words, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith." The author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" needs no grander monument; for he lives in the hearts of the people.

Oliver Goldsmith was born in Pallas, Ireland, in 1728, the son of a poor minister, who, by means of tilling some fields and assisting in a parish outside his own, earned two hundred dollars a year for his wife and seven children! When about six years old, Oliver nearly died of smallpox, and his pitted face made him an object of jest among the boys. At eight he showed great fondness for books, and began to write verses. His mother pleaded for a college education for him, but there seemed little prospect of it. One day, when a few were dancing at his uncle's house, the little boy sprang upon the floor and began to dance. The fiddler, to make fun of his short figure and homely face, exclaimed, "Æsop!" The boy, stung to the quick, replied: —

"Heralds, proclaim aloud! all saying,
'See Æsop dancing and his monkey playing;'"

when, of course, the fiddler became much chagrined.

All his school life Oliver was painfully diffident, but a good scholar. His father finally earned a better salary, and the way seemed open for college, when, lo! his sister, who had the opportunity of marrying a rich man, was obliged – so thought the public opinion of the day – to have a marriage portion of $2,000, and poor Oliver's educational hopes were blasted. He must now enter Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar (servant), wear a coarse black gown without sleeves, a red cap, – the badge of servitude, – sweep the courts, carry dishes, and be treated with contempt, which nearly crushed his sensitive nature.

A year and a half later his father died, and his scanty means ceased from that source. To keep from starving he wrote ballads, selling them to street musicians at $1.25 apiece, and stole out at night to hear them sung. Often he shared this pittance with some one more wretched than himself. One cold night he gave his blankets to a person with five children, and crawled into the ticking of his bed for warmth. When a kind friend, who often brought him food, came in the morning, he was obliged to break in the door, as Goldsmith could not extricate himself from his bed.

Obtaining a small scholarship, he gave a little party in his room in honor of the event. A savage tutor appeared in the midst of the festivities, and knocked him down. So incensed was Goldsmith that he ran away from college, and with twenty-five cents in his pocket started for Cork. For three days he lived on eight cents a day, and, by degrees, parted with nearly all his clothes for food.

Though wholly unfitted for the ministry, Goldsmith was urged by his relatives to enter the church, because he would then have a living. Too young to be accepted, he remained at home for two years, assisting his brother Henry in the village school; and then offering himself as a candidate, was refused, it was said, because he appeared before the right reverend in scarlet trousers! After being tutor for a year, his uncle gave him $250, that he might go to Dublin and study law. On arriving, he met an old friend, lost all his money in playing cards with him, and, ashamed and penniless, returned and begged the forgiveness of his relative.

A little more money was given him, and with this he studied medicine in Edinburgh for over a year, earning later some money by teaching. Afterward he travelled in Italy and France, begging his way by singing or playing on his flute at the doors of the peasants, returning to England at twenty-eight years of age without a cent in his pocket. Living among the beggars in Axe Lane, he asked to spread plasters, or pound in the mortars of the apothecaries, till, finally, a chemist hired him out of pity. Through the aid of a fellow-student, he finally opened a doctor's office, but few came to a stranger, and these usually so poor as to be unable to pay.

Attending one day upon a workman, he held his hat close to his breast, so as to cover a big patch in his second-hand clothes, while he felt the patient's pulse. Half guessing the young doctor's poverty, the sick man told him about his master, the author of the famous old novel, "Clarissa Harlowe," and how he had befriended writers. Goldsmith at once applied for work, and became press corrector in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street.

Later he was employed as a reviewer on a magazine. Being obliged to submit all his reviews to an illiterate bookseller and his wife, the engagement soon came to an end. He lived now in a garret, was dunned even for his milk-bill, wrote a book for a college friend, under whose name it was published, and began a work of his own, "Polite Learning in Europe," writing to a wealthy relative for aid to publish, which letter was never answered, though it was greatly regretted after Goldsmith became famous.

With no hope in London, he was promised a position in the East Indies. Life began to look bright, though his Fleet Street garret, with one chair, was surrounded by swarms of children and dirt. The promise was not kept, and he applied for the position of hospital mate. His clothes being too poor for him to be seen on the streets, he pledged the money to be received for four articles, bought a new suit, went up to the court of examiners, and was rejected! Had any of these positions been obtained, the world, doubtless, would never have known the genius of Oliver Goldsmith.

He went back to his garret to write, pawned his clothes to pay the landlady, who was herself to be turned out of the wretched lodgings, sold his "Life of Voltaire" for twenty dollars, and published his "Polite Learning in Europe," anonymously. The critics attacked it, and Goldsmith's day of fame had dawned at last. "The Citizen of the World," a good-natured satire on society, next appeared, and was a success. Dr. Johnson became his friend, and made him a member of his club with Reynolds, Burke, and other noted men. The "Traveller" was next published, with an immense sale. Goldsmith now moved into the buildings which bear his name, near Temple Church, and, for once, had flowers and green grass to look out upon.

He was still poor, doubtless spending what money he received with little wisdom. His landlady arrested him for room-rent, upon hearing which, Dr. Johnson came at once to see him, gave him money, took from his desk the manuscript of the "Vicar of Wakefield," and sold it to a publisher for three hundred dollars. This was the fruit of much labor, and the world received it cordially. Some of his essays were now reprinted sixteen times. What a change from the Fleet Street garret!

The "Deserted Village" was published five years later, Goldsmith having spent two whole years in reviewing it after it was written, so careful was he that every word should be the best that could be chosen. This was translated at once into German by Goethe, who was also a great admirer of the "Vicar of Wakefield." He also wrote an English History, a Roman, a Grecian, several dramas, of which "She Stoops to Conquer" was the most popular, and eight volumes of the "History of the Earth and Animated Nature," for which he received five hundred dollars a volume, leaving this unfinished.

Still in debt, overworked, laboring sometimes far into the morning hours, not leaving his desk for weeks together, even for exercise, Goldsmith died at forty-five, broken with the struggle of life, but with undying fame. When he was buried, one April day, 1774, Brick Court and the stairs of the building were filled with the poor and the forsaken whom he had befriended. His monument is in the Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey, the greatest honor England could offer. True, she let him nearly starve, but she crowned him at the last. He conquered the world by hard work, kindness, and a gentleness as beautiful as his genius was great.

MICHAEL FARADAY

In the heart of busy London, over a stable, lived James and Margaret Faraday, with their four little children. The father was a blacksmith, in feeble health, unable to work for a whole day at a time, a kind, good man to his household; the mother, like himself, was uneducated, but neat and industrious, and devoted to her family. The children learned the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic at school, and then, of course, were obliged to earn their living.

Michael, the third child, born 1791, became, at thirteen years of age, an errand-boy in a bookseller's shop. His first duty was to carry newspapers in the morning to customers, who read them for an hour or two for a trifle, a penny probably, and then gave them to the newsboy to be re-loaned. Often on Sunday morning the patrons would say, "You must call again," forgetting that the next place might be a mile away, and that the young boy was quite as desirous as they, to go to church with his parents. Years after this, when he had become famous the world over, he said, "I always feel a tenderness for those boys, because I once carried newspapers myself."

The following year, 1805, he was apprenticed to a bookseller for seven years, to learn the trade of binding and selling books. Here was hard work before him till he was twenty-one; not a cheerful prospect for one who loved play as well as other boys. Whenever he had a spare moment, he was looking inside the books he was binding. Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations in Chemistry" delighted him; and when he was given the "Encyclopedia Britannica" to bind, the article on Electricity seemed a treasure-house of wonders. He soon made an electrical machine, – not an expensive one, – simply a glass vial, and other apparatus of a similar kind; and afterwards with a real cylinder. These cost only a few pence a week, but they gave a vast amount of pleasure to the blacksmith's son.

One day he saw in a shop-window a notice that a Mr. Tatum was to give at his own house some lectures on Natural Philosophy. The charge for each was twenty-five cents. No bookseller's apprentice would have such an amount of money to spend weekly as that. However, his brother Robert, three years older, himself a blacksmith, with some pride, perhaps, that Michael was interested in such weighty matters, furnished the money, and a lodger at the home of the bookseller taught him drawing, so that he might be able, in taking notes, to illustrate the experiments. He attended the lectures, wrote them out carefully in a clear hand, bound them in four volumes, and dedicated them to his employer.

A customer at the shop had become interested in a boy who cared so much for science, and took him to hear four lectures given by Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution. This was an unexpected pleasure. He was beginning to sigh for something beyond book-binding. "Oh, if I could only help in some scientific work, no matter how humble!" he thought to himself. He says in his journal, "In my ignorance of the world, and simplicity of my mind, I wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society." No answer was ever returned to the request for a situation. Could the president have realized that some day ten thousand people would know the name of Michael Faraday where one knew the name of Sir Joseph Banks, probably he would have answered the boy's letter. Blessings on the great man or woman who takes time, however briefly, to answer every letter received! Such a man was Garfield, and such is Whittier. A civil question demands a civil answer, whether the person addressed be king or peasant.

About the time his apprenticeship ended, in 1812, he summoned courage to write directly to the great Sir Humphry Davy, sending the full notes he had made at that gentleman's lectures. Sir Humphry, possibly remembering that he, too, had been a poor boy, the son of a widowed milliner, wrote a polite note, saying, that "Science was a harsh mistress, and, in a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarding those who devoted themselves to her service;" that he was going out of town, but would see if he could some time aid him.

Meantime Michael was making crude galvanic experiments. He bought some malleable zinc, cut out seven plates, each the size of a half-penny, covered these with the copper half-pennies, placing between them six pieces of paper soaked in a solution of muriate of soda, and with this simple battery, decomposed sulphate of magnesia. So pleased was he that he wrote a letter to one of his boy friends, telling of the experiment, and adding, "Time is all I require. Oh, that I could purchase at a cheap rate some of our modern gent's spare hours, nay, days! I think it would be a good bargain, both for them and for me." The youth had learned the first secret of success, – not to waste time; not to throw it away on useless persons or useless subjects.

He had learned another secret, that of choosing right companions. To this same young friend, Abbott, he wrote, "A companion cannot be a good one, unless he is morally so. I have met a good companion in the lowest path of life, and I have found such as I despised in a rank far superior to mine… I keep regular hours, and enter not intentionally into pleasures productive of evil." London's highest circles possessed no purer spirit than this young mechanic.

Faraday now began work at his trade of book-binding for a Frenchman in London, who, having no children, promised him the business, if he would remain with him always; but the employer's temper was so hasty that the position became almost unbearable. The young man was growing depressed in spirits, when one night, just as he was preparing for bed, a loud knock on the door startled him. On looking out of the window, he espied a grand carriage, with a footman in livery, who left a note. This was a request from Sir Humphry Davy to see him in the morning. Was there, then, the possibility of a place in the Royal Institution? Between conflicting hopes and fears, he went to sleep, and in the morning hastened to see the great chemist. The result was an engagement at six dollars a week, with two rooms at the top of the house! He was to clean the instruments, move them to and from the lecture-room, and in all ways to make himself useful. Now he could say good-by to book-binding; and, though six dollars a week was not a munificent sum, yet he could actually handle beautiful instruments, – not copper half-pence and bits of zinc, – and could listen to stimulating lectures.

And now work began in earnest. He joined the City Philosophical Society, an association of thirty or forty persons in moderate circumstances, who met each Wednesday evening, one of their number giving a lecture. Then a half dozen friends came together once a week to read, criticise, and correct each other in pronunciation and conversation. How eagerly would such a young man have attended college! There was no opportunity to hear polished talk in elegant drawing-rooms, no chance to improve manners in so-called "best society." He did what is in the power of everybody, – he educated himself. Did he not need recreation after the hard day's work? Every person has to make his choice. Amusements do not make scholars: pleasure and knowledge do not go hand in hand. Faraday chose the topmost story of the Royal Institution, and books for companions, and immortal fame was the result.

The experiments with Davy soon became absorbing, and often dangerous. Now they extracted sugar from beet-root; now they treated chloride of nitrogen, wearing masks of glass upon their faces, which, notwithstanding, were sometimes badly cut by the explosions. Seven months after this, Sir Humphry decided to travel upon the Continent, and asked Faraday to be his amanuensis. This was a rare opportunity for the young assistant. For a year and a half they visited France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, climbing Vesuvius, enjoying art-galleries, and meeting the learned and famous of the age. The journey had its disagreeable side; for Faraday was made more or less a servant by Davy and his sometimes inconsiderate wife; but it had great and lasting advantages for one who had never been but twelve miles from London.

His heart turned longingly back to the poor ones he had left behind. He wrote to his mother, "The first and last thing in my mind is England, home, and friends. When sick, when cold, when tired, the thoughts of those at home are a warm and refreshing balm to my heart… These are the first and greatest sweetness in the life of man… I am almost contented except with my ignorance, which becomes more visible to me every day." And again, "I have several times been more than half decided to return hastily home: I am only restrained by the wish of improvement." To his sister he wrote, "Give my love with a kiss to mother, the first thing you do on reading this letter, and tell her how much I think of her." To Abbott he wrote something intended for his eyes only, but headed, "I do not wish that my mother should remain ignorant of it. I have no secrets from her." His heart bounded with joy at the prospect of meeting them again, and "enjoying the pleasure of their conversation, from which he had been excluded." No absorption in science could make him outgrow his parents and his humble home.

On his return to England his salary was increased to $500 yearly, and he was promoted to Laboratory Assistant. He was now twenty-four. He had noted carefully Davy's researches in iodine and chlorine, had seen him develop his safety-lamp, which has proved an untold blessing to miners, had made many experiments from his own thinking; and now he too was to give his first course of six lectures before his friends in the City Philosophical Society, on Chemical Affinity, and kindred topics. He wrote them out with great care; for whatever he did was well done. This year he published his first paper in the "Quarterly Journal of Science" on caustic lime. Encouraged by the approving words of Sir Humphry, the following year he wrote six papers for the "Quarterly," giving his experiments with gases and minerals, and gave another course of lectures before the Philosophical Society. To improve himself in delivering these, he attended lectures on oratory, taking copious notes.

Seven years had now gone by in his apprenticeship to Science. He had published thirty-seven papers in the "Quarterly," had a book ready for the press, on the alloys of steel, and had read a paper before the Royal Society itself, on two new compounds of chlorine and carbon, and a new compound of iodine, carbon, and hydrogen. But the young and now brilliant student had other weighty matters in hand. Five years before this, he had written in his diary:

"What is't that comes in false, deceitful guise,
Making dull fools of those that 'fore were wise?
'Tis love.
What's that the wise man always strives to shun,
Though still it ever o'er the world has run?