Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/420

380 380 THOMAS TEGG. don," was carefully treasured in all his wanderings, and in the associations it called up, in the hopes it excited in all his wondering, childish dreams, proved a soothing solace to his troubles. His schoolmaster, too, was a kind-hearted man, who made a point of study- ing each boy's individual character, and of educating each for his individual calling. Ruling by " kindness rather than by flagellation," he frequently took his pupils for country rambles, and taught them lessons out of the great book of Nature. Nor was he wholly forgotten by his relatives, for we read that he was sent a parcel of tea then a wonderful luxury. After much consultation as to the best method of cooking the delicacy, one half of it was boiled in the " big pot," the liquor strained off and the leaves served up as greens; "but," he adds, "it was not eaten." After staying at Galashiels for four years, he was given the choice of being apprenticed either to a saddler or a bookseller ; and his fondness for books, and the desire already formed of being at some time a bookseller in the London he pictured to himself every night in his dreams, led him at once to select the latter alterna- tive. His dominie at parting, gave him a copy of " Dr. Franklin's Life and Essays," a book he treasured in all times of prosperity and adversity, and kept to the day of his death. On a cold, raw morning in September, he started on foot for Dalkeith, with only sixpence in his pocket ; some friendly farmers on the road gave him a lift in their cart, and in his gratitude he confided to them his boyish hopes of being by-and-by a great book- merchant in London. At Dalkeith he was bound apprentice to Alexander Meggett, a bookseller, and " from this humble origin/' says Tegg, proudly, " I,