what line of life--supreme carefulness, and perfect honesty of
workmanship.

When Jack was nine years old, his father determined to emigrate to
America, and for that purpose went to Liverpool to embark for the
United States. But when he had got as far as the docks, Mrs. Gibson,
good soul, frightened at the bigness of the ships (a queer cause of
alarm), refused plumply ever to put her foot on one of them. So her
husband, a dutiful man with a full sense of his wife's government upon
him, consented unwillingly to stop in Liverpool, where he settled down
to work again as a gardener. Hitherto, Jack and his brothers had spoken
nothing but Welsh; but at Liverpool he was put to school, and soon
learned to express himself correctly and easily in English. Liverpool
was a very different place for young Jack Gibson from Conway: there
were no hills and valleys there, to be sure, but there were shops--such
shops! all full of the most beautiful and highly coloured prints and
caricatures, after the fashion of the days when George IV. was still
Prince Regent. All his spare time he now gave up to diligently copying
the drawings which he saw spread out in tempting array before him in
the shop-windows. Flattening his little nose against the glass panes,
he used to look long and patiently at a single figure, till he had got
every detail of its execution fixed firmly on his mind's eye; and then
he would go home hastily and sketch it out at once while the picture
was still quite fresh in his vivid memory. Afterwards he would return
to the shop-window, and correct his copy by the original till it was
completely finished. No doubt the boy did all this purely for his own
amusement; but at the same time he was quite unconsciously teaching
himself to draw under a very careful and accurate master--himself.
Already, however, he found his paintings had patrons, for he sold them
when finished to the other boys; and once he got as much as sixpence
for a coloured picture of Napoleon crossing the Alps--"the largest
sum," he says brightly in his memoirs long after, "I had yet received
for a work of art."

Opportunities always arise for those who know how to use them. Little
Jack Gibson used to buy his paper and colours at a stationer's in
Liverpool, who one day said to him kindly, "My lad, you're a constant
customer here: I suppose you're a painter." "Yes, sir," Jack answered,
with childish self-complacency, "I do paint." The stationer, who had