8 SMEATON'S BOYHOOD AND EDUCATION. PART VT. 



the Reformation. At this school Smeaton is supposed 

 to have received the best part of his school instruction, 

 and it is said that his progress in geometry and arith- 

 metic was very decided ; but, as before, the chief part 

 of his education was conducted at home, amongst his 

 tools and his model machines. There he was inces- 

 santly busy whenever he had a spare moment. Indeed, 

 his mechanical ingenuity sometimes led him to play 

 tricks which involved him in trouble. Thus, it hap- 

 pened that some mechanics came into the neighbour- 

 hood to erect a " fire-engine," as the steam-engine was 

 then called, for the purpose of pumping water from the 

 Garforth coal-mines ; and Smeaton made daily visits to 

 them for the purpose of watching their operations. 

 Carefully observing their methods, he proceeded to 

 make a miniature engine at home, provided with 

 pumps and other apparatus, and he even succeeded 

 in getting it set to work before the colliery engine 

 was ready. He first tried its powers upon one of the 

 fish-ponds in front of the house at Austhorpe, which he 

 succeeded in very soon pumping completely dry, and so 

 killed all the fish in it, very much to the surprise as 

 well as annoyance of his father. But the latter seems, 

 on the whole, to have been very indulgent, for he 

 provided the boy with a workshop in an outhouse, 

 where he hammered, filed, and chiselled away very 

 much to his heart's content. Working on in this way, 

 by the time he had arrived at his fifteenth year, young 

 Smeaton had contrived to make a turning-lathe, on 

 which he turned wood and ivory, and he delighted in 

 making presents of little boxes and other articles to his 

 friends. He also learned to work in metals, which he 

 fused and forged himself, and by the age of eighteen he 

 could handle his tools with the expertness of any regular 

 smith or joiner. 



"In the year 1742," says his friend, Mr. Holmes, "I 

 spent a month at his father's house ; and being intended 



