20 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



intelligence craved appropriate food, the boy began keenly 

 to feel his painful disabilities in thus being unable to read, 

 and to desire their removal. To go to school now, in his 

 extreme poverty, was clearly impossible. What was to be 

 done ? However willing, his mother, unhappily, was unable 

 to satisfy him in this new thirst. He could not teach him- 

 self ; for up the threshold steps of the temple of learning 

 we must all be led by another, however independent we 

 may become after having entered its portals. But as yet 

 there was no kindly hand to conduct John Duncan to the 

 golden gate. 



