Time had glided on very happily till I was sixteen, and there was some talk of my being sent to a great engineer’s establishment for five or six years to learn all I could before being taken on at our own place in Bermondsey, where Russell and Company carried on business, and knocked copper and brass and tin about, and made bronze, and gun-metal, and did a great deal for other firms with furnaces, and forges, and steam-engines, wheels, and lathes.