"And how fared the growth of this child's mind the while? Thanks to the care of his mother, who had sent him to the penny school, he had learnt to read, and the desire to read had been awakened. Books, however, were very scarce. The Bible and Bunyan were the principle; he committed many chapters of the former to memory, and accepted all Bunyan's allegory as bona fide history. Afterwards, he obtained access to 'Robinson Crusoe', a few old Wesleyan magazines and some battle histories. These constituted his sole reading, until he came up to London, at the age of fifteen, as an errand boy."