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1809.
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Æt. 17-18.

tenderness for those boys, because I once carried newspapers myself.'

Faraday's indentures as an apprentice are dated October 7, 1805: one line in them is worthy to be kept—'In consideration of his faithful service no premium is given.'

Four years later his father wrote (in 1809), 'Michael is bookbinder and stationer, and is very active at learning his business. He has been most part of four years of his time out of seven. He has a very good master and mistress, and likes his place well. He had a hard time for some while at first going; but, as the old saying goes, he has rather got the head above water, as there is two other boys under him.'

Faraday himself says, 'Whilst an apprentice I loved to read the scientific books which were under my hands, and, amongst them, delighted in Marcet's "Conversations in Chemistry," and the electrical treatises in the "Encyclopædia Britannica." I made such simple experiments in chemistry as could be defrayed in their expense by a few pence per week, and also constructed an electrical machine, first with a glass phial, and afterwards with a real cylinder, as well as other electrical apparatus of a corresponding kind.' He told a friend that Watts 'On the Mind' first made him think, and that his attention was turned to science by the article 'Electricity' in an encyclopædia he was employed to bind.

'My master,' he says, allowed me to go occasionally of an evening to hear the lectures delivered by Mr. Tatum on natural philosophy at his house, 53 Dorset Street, Fleet Street. I obtained a knowledge of these