market room" was taken,
and here, when he lectured, there was no space for many who wished to
hear him. He preached on Sundays in the villages around, and at length
was asked to occupy a pulpit in Farnham itself. "I remember," says one
of his friends, "his first sermon in the old Congregational Chapel.
The place was crammed to excess, by people too who were not in the
habit of attending such places."

All this time, this "carpenter, and son of a carpenter," worked
diligently at his trade; but a sudden vacancy occurring in the
management of the Farnham British Schools, he was asked to become the
master. He did so. He left the carpenter's bench on a Saturday, and
became schoolmaster on the following Monday. This, however, was but
a temporary arrangement, for he was at the time negotiating with
the managers of Stepney College to become a pupil there; and, an
opportunity shortly afterwards occurring, which he had very promptly
to accept or refuse, he somewhat abruptly vacated his seat as a
schoolmaster, and became once more a scholar.

This was in 1848. He remained in the college four years, and he
soon learned to laugh heartily at his Farnham Latin and his Farnham
lectures. He was in the habit, while at the college, of going on
Sundays to hear the best preachers in the Metropolis, and he has told
me that he often walked from Stepney to Camberwell to hear Melvill,
who was then the most popular preacher in London.

At the end of his academic career he was invited to become the
minister at Mount Zion Chapel, in Birmingham. How he laboured here
every one in the town can testify, and I need not say one word; but
there is one fact that should be more generally known, as it shows one
result of his work. In the year before he came to Birmingham (1851),
the sum collected in this chapel for the Baptist Missions was L28
4s. 11d. The report for 1874--the last under his care--gives the
amount collected in the year as L332 5s. 5d.

I am obliged to omit much that is interesting, but I have at least
shown that his childhood's home was comfortable and respectable, and
that he did not spend his boyhood among companions unworthy of him.
In his native town his memory is as warmly cherished as it is in
Birmingham. His last public act there was to preach the first sermon
in a new and remarkably handsome Congregational Church, and it is said
that on that occasion, the number of people who sought to hear him was
so great, that the Church, a