Works of Abraham Booth Vol.1 - SAMPLE

Abraham Booth was born at Blackwell in Derbyshire, on the
20th of May 1734, Old Style. In the first year of his life, his
parents removed from Blackwell to Annesley Woodhouse, a
small hamlet in the parish of Annesley, Nottinghamshire,
where they occupied a farm belonging to the Duke of Portland.
Of a numerous family of children, Abraham was the oldest;
and there the first fifteen or sixteen years of his life were
passed, assisting his father, as soon as he was able, in his
agricultural concerns.
The advantages of education, which are of such unspeakable
importance to the cultivation of our mental powers, are
generally of difficult attainment in villages and the retired
districts of the country; and a century ago they were probably
more so than at present. This may help us to account for a
circumstance which Mr. Booth has often been heard to
mention amongst his friends; that until he quitted the farming
business he never spent six months at school. His father taught
him to read, making it a general practice to hear him his lesson
every day after dinner.
It is certainly a very just remark, that there are no characters
however eminent among our species, whose biography is so
instructive, or in which we feel more interested, than those
which exhibit to our view persevering efforts surmounting
formidable obstacles, and distinguished eminence gradually
arising out of obscurity and depression. Such is the discipline
through which many of the greatest names in the republic of
letters have passed; nor have any of the original favourites of
nature or the children of affluence attained a superiority so
solid and durable as that which has been acquired by such a
state of probation.