_genius._ That I was low-born, I did not attempt to conceal; nor did I
perceive that I had any reason to be ashamed of my birth, or of having
raised myself by honest means to a station above that in which I was
born. I was proud of this circumstance, and therefore it was no torment
to me to hear the continual hints which my well-born master threw out
upon this subject. I moreover never pretended to any knowledge which I
had not; so that, by degrees, notwithstanding his prejudices, he began
to feel that I had neither the presumption of an upstart, nor of a
self-taught genius. I kept in mind the counsel given to me by Mr. Y----,
to endeavour to make myself useful to my employer; but it was no
easy matter to do this at first, because he had such a dread of my
awkwardness that he would never let me touch any of his apparatus. I was
always left to stand like a cipher beside him whilst he lectured; and
I had regularly the mortification of hearing him conclude his lecture
with, '_Now, gentlemen and ladies, I will not detain you any longer from
what, I am sensible, is much better worth your attention than any thing
I can offer--Mr. Jervas's puppet-show_.'

"It happened one day that he sent me with a shilling, as he thought,
to pay a hostler for the feeding of his horse; as I rubbed the money
between my finger and thumb, I perceived that the white surface came
off, and the piece looked yellow: I recollected that my master had the
day before been showing some experiments with quicksilver and gold, and
that he had covered a guinea with quicksilver: so I immediately took the
money back, and my master, for the first time in his life, thanked me
very cordially; for this was in reality a guinea, and not a shilling.
He was also surprised at my directly mentioning the experiment he had
shown.

"The next day that he lectured, he omitted the offensive conclusion