he could not shoulder his wallet, as in the careless days of his boyhood, and wander away in search of knowledge or fortune.
About this time an event happened which changed his whole life. He was shown a beautiful cup of Italian manufacture. I give in his own words a description of the cup, and the effect the sight of it had on him. "An earthen cup," he says, "turned and enameled with so much beauty, that from that time I entered into controversy with my own thoughts, recalling to mind several suggestions that some people had made to me in fun, when I was painting portraits. Then, seeing that these were falling out of request in the country where I dwelt, and that glass painting was also little patronized, I began to think that if I should discover how to make enamels, I could make earthen vessels and other things very prettily, because God has gifted me with some knowledge of drawing."
His ambition was fired at once. A definite purpose formed itself in his mind. He knew nothing whatever of pottery. No man in France knew the secret of enameling, which made the Italian cup so beautiful, and Palissy had not the means to go to Italy, where he probably could have learned it. He resolved to study the nature and properties of clays, and not to rest until he had discovered the secret of the white enamel. Delightful visions filled his imagination. He thought within himself that he would become the prince of potters, and would provide his wife and children with all the luxuries that money could buy. "Thereafter," he wrote, "regardless of the fact that I had no knowledge of clays, I began to seek for the enamels as a man gropes in the dark."
Palissy was a young man when he began his search for the enamel; he was past middle life when his labors were finally rewarded. Groping like a man in the dark, as he himself said, he experimented for years with clays and chemicals, but with small success. He built with his own hands a furnace at the back of his little cottage in which to carry on his experiments. At first his enthusiasm inspired his wife and neighbors with the belief that he would succeed in his efforts. But time went on, and as one experiment after another failed or was only partially successful, one and all lost faith in him. He had no friend or helper to buoy him up under his many disappointments. Even his wife reproached him for neglecting his regular work and reducing herself and her children to poverty and want, while he wasted his time and strength in chasing a dream. His neighbors jeered at him as a madman, one who put his plain duty aside for the gratification of what seemed to their dull minds merely a whim. His poor wife could hardly be blamed for reproaching him. She could neither understand nor sympathize with his hopes and fears, while she knew that if he followed his trade, he could at least save his family from want. It was a trying time for both of them. But who ever heard tell of an artist, inventor, discoverer, or genius of any kind being deterred by poverty, abuse, ridicule, or obstacles of any kind from the pursuit of an ideal!
After many painful efforts, the poor glass painter had succeeded in producing a substance which he believed to be white enamel. He spread it on a number of earthenware pots which he had made, and placed them in his furnace. The extremities to which he was reduced to supply heat to the furnace are set forth in his own words: "Having," he says, "covered the new pieces with the said enamel, I put them into the furnace, still keeping the fire at its height; but thereupon occurred to me a new misfortune which caused great mortification, namely, that the wood having failed me, I was forced to burn the palings which maintained the boundaries of my garden; which being burnt also, I was forced to burn the tables and the flooring of my house, to cause the melting of the second composition. I suffered an anguish that I cannot speak, for I was quite exhausted and dried up by the heat of the furnace. Further, to console me, I was the object of mockery; and even those from whom solace was due ran crying through the town that I was burning my floors, and in this way my credit was taken from me, and I was regarded as a madman.
"Others said that I was laboring to make false money, which was a scandal under which I pined away, and slipped with bowed head through the streets like a man put to shame. No one gave me consolation, but, on the contrary, men jested at me, saying, 'It was right for him to die of hunger, seeing that he had left off following his trade!' All these things assailed my ears when I passed through the street; but for all that, there still remained some hope which encouraged and sustained me, inasmuch as the last trials had turned out tolerably well; and thereafter I thought that I knew enough to get my own living, although I was far enough from that (as you shall hear afterward)."
This latest experiment filled him with joy, for he had at last discovered the secret of the enamel. But there was yet much to be learned, and several years more of extreme poverty and suffering had to be endured before his labors were rewarded with complete success. But it came at last in overflowing measure, as it almost invariably does to those who are willing to work and suffer privation and persevere to the end.
His work as a potter brought Palissy fame and riches. At the invitation of Catherine de' Medici, wife of King Henry II of France, he removed to Paris. He established a workshop in the vicinity of the royal Palace of the Tuileries, and was thereafter known as "Bernard of the Tuileries." He was employed by the king and queen and some of the greatest nobles of France to embellish their palaces and gardens with the products of his beautiful art.
Notwithstanding his lack of schooling, Bernard Palissy was one of the most learned men of his day. He founded a Museum of Natural History, wrote valuable books on natural science, and for several years delivered lectures on the same subject. His lectures were attended by the most advanced scholars of Paris, who were astonished at the extent and accuracy of his knowledge of nature. But he was as modest as he was wise and good, and when people wondered at his learning, he would reply with the most unaffected simplicity, "I have had no other book than the sky and the earth, known to all."
No more touching story of success, in spite of great difficulties, than Bernard Palissy's has been written. It is bad to think that after the terrible trials which he endured for the sake of his art, his last years also should have been clouded by misfortune. During the civil war which raged in France between the Huguenots and the Catholics, he was, on account of his religious views, imprisoned in the Bastile, where he died in 1589, at the age of eighty.
How The "learned Blacksmith" Found Time
"The loss of an hour," says the philosopher, Leibnitz, "is the loss of a part of life." This is a truth that has been appreciated by most men who have risen to distinction,—who have been world benefactors. The lives of those great moral heroes put to shame the laggard youth of to-day, who so often grumbles: "I have no time. If I didn't have to work all day, I could accomplish something. I could read and educate myself. But if a fellow has to grub away ten or twelve hours out of the twenty-four, what time is left to do anything for one's self?"
How much spare time had Elihu Burritt, "the youngest of many brethren," as he himself quaintly puts it, born in a humble home in New Britain, Connecticut, reared amid toil and poverty? Yet, during his father's long illness, and after his death, when Elihu was but a lad in his teens, with the family partially dependent upon the work of his hands, he found time,—if only a few moments,—at the end of a fourteen-hour day of labor, for his books.
While working at his trade as a blacksmith, he solved problems in arithmetic and algebra while his irons were heating. Over the forge also appeared a Latin grammar and a Greek lexicon; and, while with sturdy blows the ambitious youth of sixteen shaped the iron on the anvil, he fixed in his mind conjugations and declensions.
How did this man, born nearly a century ago, possessing none of the advantages within reach of the poorest and humblest boy of to-day, become one of the brightest ornaments in the world of letters, a leader in the reform movements of his generation?
Apparently no more talented than his nine brothers and sisters, by improving every opportunity he could wring from a youth of unremitting toil, his love for knowledge grew with what it fed upon, and
