It had cost Adam a great deal of trouble and
work in overhours to know what he knew over and above the secrets of his
handicraft, and that acquaintance with mechanics and figures, and the
nature of the materials he worked with, which was made easy to him by
inborn inherited faculty--to get the mastery of his pen, and write a
plain hand, to spell without any other mistakes than must in fairness be
attributed to the unreasonable character of orthography rather than to
any deficiency in the speller, and, moreover, to learn his musical notes
and part-singing. Besides all this, he had read his Bible, including
the apocryphal books; Poor Richard's Almanac, Taylor's Holy Living and
Dying, The Pilgrim's Progress, with Bunyan's Life and Holy War, a great
deal of Bailey's Dictionary, Valentine and Orson, and part of a History
of Babylon, which Bartle Massey had lent him. He might have had many
more books from Bartle Massey, but he had no time for reading "the
commin print," as Lisbeth called it, so busy as he was with figures in
all the leisure moments which he did not fill up with extra carpentry.
Adam, you perceive, was by no means a marvellous man, nor, properly
speaking, a genius, yet I will not pretend that his was an ordinary
character among workmen; and it would not be at all a safe conclusion
that the next best man you may happen to see with a basket of tools over
his shoulder and a paper cap on his head has the strong conscience and
the strong sense, the blended susceptibility and self-command, of our
friend Adam.
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