 checking himself,
apparently crossed by some thought which jars with the singing. Perhaps, if you
had not been already in the secret, you might not have guessed what sad
memories, what warm affection, what tender fluttering hopes, had their home in
this athletic body with the broken finger-nails - in this rough man, who knew no
better lyrics than he could find in the Old and New Version and an occasional
hymn; who knew the smallest possible amount of profane history; and for whom the
motion and shape of the earth, the course of the sun, and the changes of the
seasons, lay in the region of mystery just made visible by fragmentary
knowledge. It had cost Adam a great deal of trouble, and work in over-hours, 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. He was not an average man.
Yet such men as he are reared here and there in every generation of our peasant
artisans - with an inheritance of affections nurtured by a simple family life of
common need and
