THE SECRET! 495 



wild about the streets, while she was absent earning a 

 needed pittance ; sent at ten to work for his own living, at 

 a service in which he was treated with exceptional cruelty ; 

 not knowing a single letter till his sixteenth year, and 

 unable to put pen to paper till nearly thirty ; so ex- 

 tremely shortsighted that the page had to be held 

 absurdly close to his face and to be readjusted at the 

 beginning of every line a defect that necessarily impeded 

 scientific investigation ; even, at his best, able to read with 

 difficulty and to the last requiring to spell out many words 

 in every page, for, as William Mortimer phrased it, " he 

 took a terrible time to read onything ; " having to read and 

 read again all he deciphered, in a way that raised the 

 risibility, while it excited the admiring astonishment, of 

 even the ignorant amongst whom he dwelt : and yet, in 

 spite of all these extraordinary difficulties, hard to realise 

 by those who have not known them, reading so extensively 

 as he did, conquering so thoroughly and permanently all he 

 studied, and achieving marked success in several depart- 

 ments of inquiry, and eminence at least in one science 

 crowded with technicalities above most subjects, the very 

 look of which to his unlettered eyes must have seemed a 

 terrible array of angry bayonet points sufficient to deter all 

 but the determined, of the stuff that only such as he are 

 made of. Yet these are the simple facts in the life of our 

 weaver, and these were the results. 



he also brought home the leaves of the Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) 

 aromatic and bitter (being a sister species of wormwood (Artemisia 

 absinthium} and of " Southernwood "), to make " muggart kail " for their 

 daily use a broth surely requiring long training to relish, and even 

 then being " gey fale," or considerably bitter, as John said. 



