" There is a piecer at mule-frames,
who could not read at eighteen, who is now a man of little more
than thirty, who is the sole support of an aged mother, who is
arithmetical teacher in the institution in which he himself was
taught, who writes of himself that he made the resolution never to
take up a subject without keeping to it, and who has kept to it
with such an astonishing will, that he is now well versed in Euclid
and Algebra, and is the best French scholar in Stockport. The
drawing-classes in that same Stockport are taught by a working
blacksmith; and the pupils of that working blacksmith will receive
the highest honours of to-night. Well may it be said of that good
blacksmith, as it was written of another of his trade, by the
American poet:
"Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begun,
Each evening sees its clause.
Something attempted, something done,
Has earn'd a night's repose."
To pass from the successful candidates to the delegates from local
societies now before me, and to content myself with one instance
from amongst them. There is among their number a most remarkable
man, whose history I have read with feelings that I could not
adequately express under any circumstances, and least of all when I
know he hears me, who worked when he was a mere baby at hand-loom
weaving until he dropped from fatigue: who began to teach himself
as soon as he could earn five shillings a-week: who is now a
botanist, acquainted with every production of the Lancashire
valley: who is a naturalist, and has made and preserved a
collection of the eggs of British birds, and stuffed the birds:
who is now a conchologist, with a very curious, and in some
respects an original collection of fresh-water shells, and has also
preserved and collected the mosses of fresh water and of the sea:
who is worthily the president of his own local Literary
Institution, and who was at his work this time last night as
foreman in a mill.
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