eighteen hundred and thirty-six pounds.  In the performance of this feat, Topham stood on a raised platform, his hands grasping a fixture on either side, and a broad strap over his shoulders communicating with the weight.  An immense concourse of persons was assembled on the occasion,—­the performance having been announced as “in honor of Admiral Vernon,” or rather, “in commemoration of his taking Porto Bello with six ships only.”  Being a descendant myself from the Vernon family of Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, England, I have reserved it for future genealogical inquiry to learn whether the Admiral was connected with that branch of the Vernons.  If so, a somewhat remarkable coincidence is involved.

I now informed my father that I intended to go through a series of experiments in lifting.  He was afraid I should injure myself, and expressly forbade any such practice on his premises.  To gratify him, I gave up testing the question for a whole year.

But the desire re-awoke, and I had frequent arguments with my father in the endeavor to overcome his objections.

“Look at that man,” he said to me one day,—­pointing to a large, stout individual in front of us,—­“you might practise lifting all your life, and never be able to lift as much as that big fellow.”

“Let me construct a lifting-apparatus in the back-yard, and I will soon prove to you that you are mistaken,” I replied.

Finding that I was bent on the experiment, he at length gave a reluctant consent.

It was now the August of 1855, and I was in my twenty-second year.  My first lifting-apparatus was constructed in the following manner.  I first sank into the ground a hogshead, and into the hogshead a flour-barrel.  Then I lowered to the bottom of the barrel a rope having at the end a round stick transversely balanced, about four inches in diameter and fifteen inches long.  A quantity of gravel, nearly sufficient to bury the stick, was then thrown into the barrel; some oblong stones were placed across the stick and across and between one another, and the interstices filled with smaller stones and gravel.  When I had by this method about two-thirds filled the barrel, taking care to keep the axis of the rope in correspondence with the long axis of the barrel, I judged I had a sufficient weight for a first trial.  I now formed a loop in the end of the rope over the top of the barrel, and put through it a piece of a hoe-handle, about two feet long; and standing astride of the hogshead, and holding the handle with one hand before me and the other behind,—­straightening my body, previously a little flexed,—­with mouth closed, head up, chest out, and shoulders down,—­I succeeded in lifting the barrel, containing a weight of between four and five hundred pounds, some five or six inches from the bottom of the hogshead.