THE COBBLER WHO KEPT SCHOOL IN A WORKSHOP.

Did you ever hear of John Pounds? Probably not, and yet he was one of the world's benefactors. He was born in 1766, in Portsmouth, England.

In early life he learned the trade of a shipwright, but was so injured by a fall that he had to abandon this. He then mastered the art of mending shoes, and hired a little room in a weather-beaten tenement, where for a while he lived alone, except for his birds. He loved birds dearly, and always had a number of them flying about his room, perching on his shoulder, or feeding from his hand.

In the course of time, a little cripple boy, his nephew, came to live with Uncle John and the linnets and sparrows. The poor child had not the use of his feet, which overlapped each other, and turned inward. The kind uncle did not rest until he had gradually untwisted the feet, strengthening them by an apparatus of old shoes and leather, and finally taught them to walk.

Then he thought how much more pleasantly the time would pass for the boy if he knew how to read and write, and so he began to instruct him. Presently it occurred to him that he could teach a class as easily as he could manage one pupil. So he invited some of the neighboring children in, and, as the years went on, this singular picture might be seen:

In the centre of the little shop, six feet wide and about eighteen feet long, the lame cobbler, with his jolly face and twinkling eyes, would be seated, his last or lapstone on his knee, and his hands busily plying the needle and thread. All around him would be faces. Dark eyes, blue eyes, brown eyes, would shine from every corner, and the hum of young voices and the tapping of slate-pencils were mingled with the singing of the birds which enjoyed the buzz of the school.

Some of the pupils sat on the steps of the narrow stairway which led up to the loft which was John's bedroom. Others were on boxes or blocks of wood, and some sat contentedly on the floor. They learned to read, write, and cipher as far as the Rule of Three, and besides they learned good morals, for much homely wisdom fell from the cobbler's lips.

Hundreds of boys who had no other chance—for he gathered his scholars from the poorest of the poor—learned all they ever knew of books from this humble teacher. His happiest days were when some sunburned sailor or soldier would stop in his doorway, perhaps with a parrot or a monkey in his arms, saying, "Why, master dear, you surely have not forgotten me, I hope?"

John Pounds taught his little school for more than forty years, never asking nor accepting a cent of payment from any one.

At the age of seventy-two, on January 1, 1839, he suddenly died, while looking with delight at a sketch of his school which had just been made by an artist. For many days the children of the place were inconsolable, and by twos and threes they came and stood by the closed door which in John Pounds's time had always been open to the needy.

A life like this, so lowly yet so useful, contains lessons for us all.