A friend having lent me a work on artificial memory, I began to study it; but the work led me into nothing but confusion, and I soon found that if I did not give it up, I should be left with no memory at all.

I still went an sketching from Nature, not so much as a study, but as a means of recruiting my health, which was far from being good.
At the beginning of 1881 I obtained my present situation as assistant master at the Yorebridge Grammar School, of which the Rev.W.
Balderston, M.A., is principal.
"Soon after I became settled here, I spent some of my leisure time in reading Emerson's 'Optics,' a work I bought at an old bookstall.

I was not very successful with it, owing to my deficient mathematical knowledge.

On the May Science Examinations of 1881 taking place at Newcastle-on-Tyne, applied for permission to sit, and obtained four tickets for the following subjects:--Mathematics, Electricity and Magnetism, Acoustics, Light and Heat, and Physiography.

During the preceding month I had read up the first three subjects, but, being pressed for time, I gave up the idea of taking physiography.