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 wood-carving.
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
attempt, and also with a clever head of Mercury in marble, which Gibson
carved in his spare moments.

The more the lad saw of clay and marble, the greater grew his distaste
for mere woodwork. At last, he determined to ask Mr. Francis to buy out
his indentures from the cabinet-makers, and let him finish his
apprenticeship as a sculptor. But unfortunately the cabinet-makers found
Gibson too useful a person to be got rid of so easily: they said he was
the most industrious lad they had ever had; and so his very virtues
seemed as it were to turn against him. Not so, really: Mr. Francis
thought so well of the boy that he offered the masters L70 to be quit of
their bargain; and in the end, Gibson himself having made a very firm
stand in the matter, he was released from his indentures and handed over
finally to Mr. Francis and a sculptor's life.

And now the eager boy was at last "truly happy." He had to model all day
long, and he worked away at it with a will. Shortly after he went to Mr.
Francis's yard, a visitor came upon business, a magnificent-looking old