Punch (72.1877)

38

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[February 3, 1877.

THOMAS EDWARD NATURALIST AND COBBLER.

" Help yourself! " is a good rule, and a capital text, on which
Me. Smiles, some time ago, preached a sermon hy examples, with
the title of Self-Help'. The moral of this sermon is summed in the
old proverb., " God helps those who help themselves." For there
indeed lies the strength of " Self-Help "—it is God's help. And
now Mr. Smiles has preached another sermon on the same text,
called The Life of a Scotch Naturalist, It is the wonderful true
story of a wonderful true man—Thomas Edward, Associate of the
Linntean Society, and souter in Banff ; a story to bring tears
into the eyes, and to fill the heart with sadness and gladness: a
story to make those who read it better, humbler, and gentler, and,
above all, more thankful to the Great Father of All, who can so
mysteriously teach and guide, strengthen and lead up one of the
humblest of his children, from eleven years of age till sixty-three
an earner of distressful bread at a cobbler's stool with an average
■wage of nine.shillings a-week.

_ Thomas Edward has lived two lives. There was first the humble
life of the hardly brought up son of a poor weaver; scholar, now
and then, for brief spells, of brutal dominies ; next apprentice of
a drunken ruffian ; then toiling bread-winner for a brave and true

wife, and a well-reared family of eleven children. This was.Jthe
man who helped himself.

But side by side with this life he was living another—of_ com-
munion with the wonderful works of God, who took upon himself
this part of his teaching, instead of the dominie with his taws and
cane; binding: him apprentice to nature, instead of drunken Charley
Begg in the Gallowgate ; and after his days of sordid stooping over
uppers and twitching at waxed-ends, giving him nights of wonderful
intercourse with all living things ; appointing him "the beasties" for
books, and the silent hours of darkness for his school-time ; and holes
in dykes, or bields under stone walls, or bits of crumbling ruin, for
his school-rooms. This was the man helped of God.

If you want to know how Thomas Edward lived those two lives
side by side, helping himself manfully under the heavy burdens of a
poor man among poor men, and letting God help him wonderfully,
in gathering wide and rare knowledge of plants and beasts, birds,
and creeping things, fishes, and crabs, starfishes, and molluscs,
till he was able to add new chapters to the gr< at book of natural
science, and4to teach teachers, and win honour from renowned Natu-
ralists, and was, at length, made an Associate of the most famous