ugh. The grocer considers
Gainsborough the greater artist, and surely his fame is wide, like unto
the hat--hated by theater-goers--that his name has rendered deathless,
and which certain unkind ones declare has given him immortality. Joshua
was the seventh child in the brood of five boys and six girls. The fond
parents set him apart for the Church, and to that end he was placed in
the Plympton Grammar-School, and made to "do" fifty lines of Ovid a day.

The old belief that to translate Latin with facility was the true test of
genius has fallen somewhat into desuetude, yet there are a few who still
hold to the idea that to reason, imagine and invent are not the tests of
a man's powers; he must conjugate, decline and derive. But Grant Allen,
possessor of three college degrees, avers that a man may not even be able
to read and write, and yet have a very firm mental grasp on the eternal
verities.

Anyway, Joshua Reynolds did not like Latin. He hated the set task of
fifty lines, and hated the system that imposed a fine of twenty lines for
a failure to fulfil the first.

The fines piled up until young Joshua, aged twelve, goin' on thirteen,
went into such hopeless bankruptcy that he could not pay tuppence on the
pound.

We have a sheet of this Latin done at that time, in a cramped, schoolboy
hand, starting very bold and plain, and running off into a tired blot and
scrawl. On the bottom of the page is a picture, and under this is a line
written by the father: "This is drawn by Joshua in school out of pure
idleness." The Reverend Samuel had no idea that his own name would live
in history simply because he was the father of this idle boy.

Still, the clergyman showed that he was a man of good sense, for he
acceded to the lad's request to let the Latin slide. This conclusion no
doubt was the easier arrived at after the master of the school had
explained that the proper education of such a youth was quite hopeless.

All the Reynolds children drew pictures and most of them drew better than
Joshua. But Joshua did not get along well at school, and so he felt the
necessity of doing something.

It is a great blessing to be born into a family where strict economy of
time and money is necessary. The idea that nothing shall be wasted, and
that each child must carve out for himself a career, is a thrice-blessed
heritage.

Rich parents are an awful handicap to youth, and few indeed there be who
have the strength to stand prosperity