was clay in the hand of
the potter, for while the boys of his age were frolicking through the
streets of the little village of Burslem where he lived, he was learning
the three R's at his mother's knee.

I hardly suppose we can speak of a woman who was the mother of thirteen
children before she was forty, and taking care of them all without a
servant, as highly cultivated. Several of Josiah's brothers and sisters
never learned to read and write, for like Judith Shakespeare, the
daughter of William, they made their mark: which shows us that there are
several ways of turning that pretty trick. Children born of the same
parents are not necessarily related to each other, nor to their parents.

Mary Wedgwood, Josiah's mother, wrote for him his name in clay, and some
years after he related how he copied it a hundred times every day for a
week, writing with a stick in the mud.

Lame children or weakly ones seem to get their quota of love all right,
so let us not feel sorry for them--everything is equalized.

When Josiah was fourteen he could write better than either his mother or
his brother Thomas; for we have the signatures of all three appended to
an indenture of apprenticeship, wherein Josiah was bound to his brother
Thomas for five years. The youngster was to be taught the "mystery,
trade, occupation and secrets of throwing and handling clay, and also
burning it." But the fact was that as he was born in the pottery and had
lived and worked in it, and was a most alert and impressionable child,
he knew quite as much about the work as his brother Thomas, who was
twenty years older. Years are no proof of ability.

At nineteen, Josiah's apprenticeship to his brother expired. "I have my
trade, a lame leg and the marks of smallpox--and I never was
good-looking, anyway," he wrote in his commonplace-book.

The terrific attack of smallpox that he had undergone had not only
branded his face, but had left an inflammation in his right knee that
made walking most difficult. This difficulty was no doubt aggravated by
his hard work turning the potter's wheel with one foot. During the
apprenticeship the brother had paid him no wages, simply "booarde,
meate, drink and cloatheing."

Now he was sick, lame and penniless. His mother had died the year
before. He was living with his brothers and sisters, who were poor, and
felt that he was more or less of a burden to them and to the world: the
tide was at ebb. And about this time it was