that?"

"By never losing a single minute or part of a minute," was the brave
reply, "that I could by any means improve."

It is wonderful indeed that when once Edward had begun to attract
anybody's attention at all, he and his exhibition should ever have been
allowed to pass so unnoticed in a great, rich, learned city like
Aberdeen. But it only shows how very hard it is for unassuming merit to
push its way; for the Aberdeen people still went unheeding past the shop
in Union Street, till Edward at last began to fear and tremble as to how
he should ever meet the expenses of the exhibition. After the show had
been open four weeks, one black Friday came when Edward never took a
penny the whole day. As he sat there alone and despondent in the empty
room, the postman brought him a letter. It was from his master at Banff.
"Return immediately," it said, "or you will be discharged." What on
earth could he do? He couldn't remove his collection; he couldn't pay
his debt. A few more days passed, and he saw no way out of it. At last,
in blank despair, he offered the whole collection for sale. A gentleman
proposed to pay him the paltry sum of L20 10s for the entire lot, the
slow accumulations of ten long years. It was a miserable and totally
inadequate price, but Edward could get no more. In the depths of his
misery, he accepted it. The gentleman took the collection home, gave it
to his boy, and finally allowed it all, for want of care and attention,
to go to rack and ruin. And so that was the end of ten years of poor
Thomas Edward's unremitting original work in natural history. A sadder
tale of unrequited labour in the cause of science has seldom been
written.

How he ever recovered from such a downfall to all his hopes and