immediately to try again. But not being an ordinary child, he
determined this time to do better; he drew the geese one behind the
other as one generally sees them in actual nature. His mother then
asked him to draw a horse; and "after gazing long and often upon
one," he says, "I at last ventured to commit him to the slate."
When he had done so, the good mother was even more delighted. So,
to try his childish art, she asked him to put a rider on the
horse's back. Jack went out once more, "carefully watched men on
horseback," and then returning, made his sketch accordingly. In
this childish reminiscence one can see already the first workings
of that spirit which made Gibson afterwards into the greatest
sculptor of all Europe. He didn't try even then to draw horse or
man by mere guesswork; he went out and studied the subject at first
hand. There are in that single trait two great elements of success
in no matter what line of life--supreme carefulness, and perfect
honesty of workmanship.

When Jack was nine years old, his father determined to emigrate to
America, and for that purpose went to Liverpool to embark for the
United States. But when he had got as far as the docks, Mrs.
Gibson, good soul, frightened at the bigness of the ships (a queer
cause of alarm), refused plumply ever to put her foot on one of
them. So her husband, a dutiful man with a full sense of his
wife's government upon him, consented unwillingly to stop in
Liverpool, where he settled down to work again as a gardener.
Hitherto, Jack and his brothers had spoken nothing but Welsh; but
at Liverpool he was put to school, and soon learned to express
himself correctly and easily in English. Liverpool was a very
different place for young Jack Gibson from Conway: there were no
hills and valleys there, to be sure, but there were shops--such