ing continued
excessive. But he fell back upon his old expedient of working up his
spare time in the evenings at home, or during the night shifts when it
was his turn to tend the engine, in mending and making shoes, cleaning
clocks and watches, making shoe-lasts for the shoe-makers of the
neighbourhood, and cutting out the pitmen's clothes for their wives; and
we have been told that to this day there are clothes worn at Killingworth
made after "Geordy Steevie's cut." To give his own words:--"In the
earlier period of my career," said he, "when Robert was a little boy, I
saw how deficient I was in education, and I made up my mind that he
should not labour under the same defect, but that I would put him to a
good school, and give him a liberal training. I was, however, a poor
man; and how do you think I managed? I betook myself to mending my
neighbours' clocks and watches at nights, after my daily labour was done,
and thus I procured the means of educating my son." {52}

Carrying out the resolution as to his boy's education, Robert was sent to
Mr. Bruce's school in Percy Street, Newcastle, at Midsummer, 1815, when
he was about twelve years old. His father bought for him a donkey, on
which he rode into Newcastle and back daily; and there are many still
living who remember the little boy, dressed in his suit of homely grey
stuff, cut out by his father, cantering along to school upon the "cuddy,"
with his wallet of provisions for the day and his bag of books slung over
his shoulder.

When Robert went to Mr. Bruce's school, he was a shy, unpolished country
lad, speaking the broad dialect of the pitmen; and the other boys would
occasionally tease him, for the purpose of provoking an outburst of his
Killingworth Doric. As the shyness got rubbed off, his love of fun began
to show itself, and he was found able enough to hold his own amongst the
other boys. As a scholar he was steady and diligent, and his master was
accustomed to hold him up to the laggards of the school as an example of
good conduct and industry. But his progress, though satisfactory, was by
no means extraordinary. He used in after-life to pride himself on his
achievements in mensuration, though another boy, John Taylor, beat him at
arithmetic. He also made considerable progress in mathematics; and in a
letter written to the son of his teacher, many years after, he said, "It
was to Mr. Bruce's tuition and methods of modelling the mind that I
attribute m