Oh! but it was hard for the little man, the heavy lapstone and all this thumping and pounding to make a shoe.

Oh! how the stiff waxen threads cut into his soft fingers, how all his body ached with the constrained position and the rough work of shoemaking.

But one day the little nine-year-old, who was "not much bigger than a last," was able to produce a real shoe.

Then it was probably that a dawning consciousness of power awoke within the child's mind.

He himself by patience and industry had created a something where before was nothing.
The eye of the boy got for the first time a glimpse of the man, who was still afar off, shadowy in the dim approaches of the hereafter.