have given the direction to all Gibson's later life: for when the
time came for him to choose a trade, he was not set to till the
ground like his father, but was employed at once on comparatively
artistic and intelligent handicraft.

Jack was fourteen when his father apprenticed him to a firm of
cabinet-makers. For the first year, he worked away contentedly at
legs and mouldings; but as soon as he had learnt the rudiments of
the trade he persuaded his masters to change his indentures, and
let him take the more suitable employment of carving woodwork for
ornamental furniture. He must have been a good workman and a
promising boy, one may be sure, or his masters would never have
countenanced such a revolutionary proceeding on the part of a raw
apprentice. Young Gibson was delighted with his new occupation,
and pursued it so eagerly that he carved even during his leisure
hours from plaster casts. But after another year, as ill-luck or
good fortune would have it, he happened to come across a London
marble-cutter, who had come down to Liverpool to carve flowers in
marble for a local firm. The boy was enchanted with his freer and
more artistic work; when the marble-cutter took him over a big
yard, and showed him the process of modelling and cutting, he began
to feel a deep contempt for his own stiff and lifeless occupation
of woodcarving. Inspired with the desire to learn this higher
craft, he bought some clay, took it home, and moulded it for
himself after all the casts he could lay his hands on. Mr.
Francis, the proprietor of the marble works, had a German workman
in his employ of the name of Luge, who used to model small figures,
chiefly, no doubt, for monumental purposes. Young Gibson borrowed
a head of Bacchus that Luge had composed, and made a copy of it
himself in clay. Mr. Francis was well pleased with this early