while his mates were outside in the glorious sunshine, playing at their games and enjoying themselves to the top of their bent.
The method of expostulation he adopted at last was a refusal to learn his lesson. There was a sharp battle, of course, but the issue was never in doubt. On that day, his grandfather happened to visit Eccleston. The position that had arisen, which was the talk of the household, was explained to the old gentleman, and it was agreed that the naughty boy should be taken away by him to the farm. There was no intention of sending him on to the land permanently, but it was thought that he would soon tire of country life, and would be glad to get back to Eccleston and his books.
He did soon grow tired of the country, and further conferences between the heads of the family led to an arrangement under which he was apprenticed to Messrs. Dalgliesh and Co., engineers and iron founders, of St. Helens. He was fourteen years of age then. Having served an apprenticeship of five years, at the end of which he was told that he had given his employers complete satisfaction, he was sent to the firm’s Vauxhall Factory at Liverpool, where he evidently gave satisfaction also. Forty years later, when he returned to England as one of the Colonial Premiers at the King’s coronation ceremonies, he saw the foreman of the Vauxhall factory, and asked him jocularly if he would give him a job, and the foreman replied in the affirmative. “He were a good ’un,” he remarked to one of Mr. Seddon’s friends; “and, if he likes to come back, I’ll give him a job to-morrow.”
Things were not to young Seddon’s liking, however. He was restive, and he longed for change. He did not like the conditions under which the working classes in England had to labour. He saw skilled artizans, capable, sober, and industrious men, slaving ten hours a day for small wages, and he often felt keenly the oppression that took place all around him.
He listened eagerly to the stories of fortunes made in a few weeks in Australia. He was told that young men like himself went to Australia as poor as he was, and returned in a few years rolling in wealth. He tried to put thoughts of the great goldfields out of his mind, and to settle down to the vocation
