gh to
warrant his removal from school.

But not so reasoned the father of John Howard, for we find him at this
age apprenticing his only son to Alderman Newham, a wholesale grocer on
Watling Street, London.

That this was not a change made from pecuniary necessity is evidenced by
the liberal provision made for the boy. We are told that his father paid
L700 for his fee of apprenticeship, and provided him a separate suite of
apartments, a servant, and a pair of saddle-horses! The inference is
that young John's progress in school was not such as to warrant his
continuance at his books.

His letters and manuscripts still in existence reveal a lamentable
deficiency in orthography and the handling of the king's English.

Some of Howard's biographers attempt to attribute his methodical
businesslike habits in later life to the experience gained while in the
service of this wholesale grocer. But when we consider that his stay was
far less than one year, we may fairly be allowed to conclude that more
was due to an inherited temperament for slow methodical action.

Before reaching his seventeenth year, the death of his father released
him from the grocery business, for which he had evidently no affection,
and left him in possession of L7,000 in ready cash, beside land, plate,
house, etc.

This fortune was left under the management of guardians, it being his
father's wish that he should not control it until his twenty-fourth
year. But his course of life goes to show that he had wonderfully easy
trustees, as he immediately bought himself off the grocery business, and
made a long tour of the Continent for the benefit of his health.
Returning to England, he dropped into the little village of Stoke
Newington, a mere hamlet, where he had some possessions.

That a young man of wealth and free from all ties of family or business,
should have voluntarily chosen such a home, and been contented to remain
there, in a state of idle inactivity, for the space of seven or eight
years, can be accounted for only by remembering his feeble health.

When twenty-five, his health entirely failed, and he was prostrated by a
severe fit of illness, through which he was nursed by his landlady, Mrs.
Loidore. Upon his recovery he made her his wife, in testimony of his
gratitude, though history records that she had neither beauty, money,
nor health, having been an invalid for twenty-two years, and was
twenty-seven years his senior.

Two or three yea