THE LIFE OF
powers of observation as he was endowed with it was highly desirable that he should not be without opportunity for exercising them.
At the age of eighteen he had done growing, and measured five feet eight in his shoes; hair brown, with a slight twist in it, scarcely amounting to a curl; complexion moderately fair, and eyes between gray and green. When his apprenticeship was over he paid his addresses to the second daughter of a bookseller in Cheapside, and married her after a three years' courtship. During the next eleven years, Mr. Smith was blessed with seven children—John, his eldest son; Mary, named after her grandmother; Fanny, Thomas, Elizabeth, James, and Sarah.
A few days after the birth of this last, his father died, leaving him the braziery business, and four thousand pounds in the funds. Mr. Smith was a kind son. His mother lived with him, and her old age was cheered by the sight of his honors, worth, and talents. About this time he took out a patent for a new kind of poker; and in the same year his fellow-citizens showed their sense of his deserts by making him an alderman of London.
Happy in the esteem of all, and in the possession of a good business, he lived very quietly till he reached the age of fifty, when his mother died, and was respectably buried by her son in the parish church of Cripplegate.
His eldest son being now able to take charge of the shop and business, Mr. Smith resolved to travel for a month or two. He accordingly went to Ramsgate, where he enjoyed much intellectual pleasure in the
