1 8 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



a laboratory, in which I spent all my spare moments 

 and, I need scarcely add, also all my spare cash, 

 neither of which was then very plentiful. However, 

 I succeeded in getting together enough apparatus to 

 be able to perform most of the ordinary chemical 

 experiments, and thus to amuse and sometimes to bore 

 my cousins and other friends by giving them illus- 

 trated lectures. I used to ask them to mix the 

 contents of various bottles in order that I might 

 analyse them and find out the constituents of the 

 mixtures, and I suppose I was usually successful 

 doubtless much to the amazement of my young friends. 

 I remember also making gun-cotton soon after its 

 invention by Schonbein in 1846, and, to the astonish- 

 ment of my boy friends, firing small cannon loaded 

 with it. 



Much was done by the authorities of the school to 

 interest the boys in their work (much more than is the 

 case now in many schools), and we had an excellent 

 library. I was a somewhat omnivorous reader, and 

 devoured the novels of Scott, Marryat, Fielding, &c., 

 but my chief enjoyment was working in my laboratory. 

 I do not remember what chemistry books I read. 

 There were not many in those days, though I had 

 Kerr's translation of Lavoisier, which had belonged to 

 my father for, curiously enough, he was also interested 

 as a boy in making chemical experiments. I have 

 the book now. 



Public lectures were also frequently delivered in the 

 large hall of the school during the winter by well- 

 known men on literary and scientific subjects, and I 

 shall never forget the impression made upon me 

 by one of Mr. Pepper's lectures. He afterwards 

 became professor at the Polytechnic in Regent 

 Street, before " Pepper's ghost" was discovered, and 



