He was quite poor; he lost both father and mother from consumption when he reached his eighth year; he was frail and delicate; his brothers and sisters all died young; so that he seemed ill fitted to make any headway in the race of life.

His grandfather, who adopted him, failed in business; and Joseph Livesey commenced his career by doing the work of a domestic servant, as well as toiling at the loom.

“As we were too poor to keep a servant,” he says, “and having no female help except to wash the clothes and occasionally clean up, I may be said to have been the housekeeper.”

But, whilst he was weaving in the cellar where his grandfather and uncle also worked, he was at the same time gaining knowledge day by day.

When his pocket money of a penny a week was increased to threepence, he felt himself on the high road to wealth, and ere long he was the possessor of a Bible and a grammar, which he set himself to study whenever he could get a spare moment.

One can scarcely realise the difficulties that lay in the way of a studious boy in those days.  A newspaper cost sevenpence; there were no national schools or Sunday schools, no penny publications, no penny postage, no railways, no gas, and no free libraries, and no free education!  Yet so resolute was he in his desire for education that, though he was not even allowed a candle after the elders went to bed, he would sit up till late at night reading by the glow of the embers.

It is sad enough to see the number of families that are ruined by drink at the present time; but in Livesey’s early days people suffered even more from drunkenness than they do now.

The weavers used to keep Monday as a day of leisure; and the public-houses were crowded from morning till night with men and women, who drank away their earnings to the last penny.

In the church to which Joseph Livesey belonged the ringers and singers were hard drinkers, the gravedigger was a drunkard, and the parish clerk was often intoxicated!

Living amidst so much sin and misery, this frail lad determined to strive his hardest to assist others.  He found Sunday a day of rest and rejoicing to him “a feast of good things,” and became a Sunday-school teacher and preacher.

So far as worldly matters went he was not at all successful in early life.  Weaving was so badly paid that he tried several other trades, but only to meet with failure.

At the age of twenty he received a legacy of a few pounds; and soon after, having saved a little money, married a good and true woman, who helped him much throughout life.

“Our cottage,” says Mr. Livesey in his autobiography, “though small, was like a palace; for none could excel my Jenny for cleanliness and order.  I renovated the garden, and made it a pleasant place to walk in.  On the loom I was most industrious, working from early in the morning often till ten, and sometimes later, at night; and she not only did all the house work, but wound the bobbins for three weavers—­myself, uncle, and grandfather; and yet, with all this apparently hard lot, these were happy days.”