"Oh! if you please, sir, I was only experimenting in the garret, and there's no harm done."
"No harm done!" echoed Betty; "and if there isn't it's no fault of yours, you nasty monkey. I declare that blow up gave me such a turn you could ha' knocked me down with a feather, and there's a smell all over the house enough to pison any one."
"That'll do, Betty," said her master, finding the grim judicial countenance rather difficult to keep up, and anxious to pronounce sentence before it quite wore off. "I'll tell you what it is, young Davy, this sort of thing won't do at all. I must speak to Mr. Tonkine about you; and if I catch you at it again, you'll have to take yourself and your experiments somewhere else. So I warn you. You had much better attend to your work. It was only the other day you gave old Goody Jones a paperful of cayenne instead of cinnamon; and there's Joe Grimsly, the beadle, been here half a dozen times this day for those pills I told you to make up, and they're not ready yet. So just you take yourself off, mind your business, and don't let me have any more nonsense, or it'll be the worse for you."
And so the culprit gladly backed out of the room, not a whit abashed by the reprimand, for it was no novelty, to begin his experiments again and again, and one day, by way of compensation for keeping his master's household in constant terror of being blown up, to make his name familiar as a household word, by the invention of a little instrument that would save thousands and thousands from the fearful consequences of coal-pit explosions.
The Mr. Tonkine that his master referred to was the self-constituted protector of the Davy family. Old Davy had been a carver in the town, and dying, left his widow in very distressed circumstances, when this generous friend came forward and took upon himself the charge of the widow and her children. Young Humphrey, on leaving school, had been placed with Mr. Borlase to be brought up as an apothecary; but he was much fonder of rambling about the country, or experimenting in the garret which he had constituted his laboratory, than compounding drugs behind his master's counter. As a boy he was not particularly smart, although he was distinguished for the facility with which he gleaned the substance of any book that happened to take his fancy, and for an early predilection for poetry. As he grew up, the ardent, inquisitive turn of his mind displayed itself more strongly. He was very fond of spending what leisure time he had in strolling along the rocky coast searching for sea-drift and minerals, or reading some favourite book.
"There along the beach he wandered, nourishing a youth sublime,
With the fairy-tales of science, and the long result of time."
In after life he used often to tell how when tired he would sit down on the crags and exercise his fancy in anticipations of future renown, for already the ambition of distinguishing himself in his favourite science had seized him. "I have neither riches, nor power, nor birth," he wrote in his memorandum-book, "to recommend me; yet if I live, I trust I shall not be of less service to mankind and my friends than if I had been born with all these advantages." He read a great deal, and though without much method, managed, in a wonderfully short time, to master the rudiments of natural philosophy and chemistry, to say nothing of considerable acquaintance with botany, anatomy, and geometry; so that though the pestle and mortar might have a quieter time of it than suited his master's notions, Humphrey was busy enough in other ways.
In his walk along the beach, the nature of the air contained in the bladders of sea-weed was a constant subject of speculation with him; and he used to sigh over the limited laboratory at his command, which prevented him from thoroughly investigating the matter. But one day, as good luck would have it, the waves threw up a case of surgical instruments from some wrecked vessel, somewhat rusty and sand clogged, but in Davy's ingenious hands capable of being turned to good account. Out of an old syringe, which was contained in the case, he managed to construct a very tolerable air pump; and with an old shade lamp, and a couple of small metal tubes, he set himself to work to discover the causes of the diffusion of heat. At first sight the want of proper instruments for carrying on his researches might appear rather a hindrance to his progress in the paths of scientific discovery; but, in truth, his subsequent success as an experimentalist has been very properly attributed, in no small degree, to that necessity which is the parent of invention, and which forced him to exercise his skill and ingenuity in making the most of the scanty materials at his command. "Had he," says one of his biographers, "in the commencement of his career been furnished with all those appliances which he enjoyed at a later period, it is more than probable that he might never have acquired that wonderful tact of manipulation, that ability of suggesting expedients, and of contriving apparatus, so as to meet and surmount the difficulties which must constantly arise during the progress of the philosopher through the unbeaten track and unexplored regions of science!"
While Davy was thus busily engaged qualifying himself for the distinguished career that awaited him, Gregory Watt, the son of the celebrated James Watt, being in delicate health, came to Penzance for change of air, and lodged with Mrs. Davy. At first he and Humphrey did not get on very well together, for the latter had just been reading some metaphysical works, and was very fond of indulging in crude and flippant speculations on such subjects, which rather displeased the shy invalid. But one day some chance remark of Davy's gave token of his extensive knowledge of natural history and chemistry, and thenceforth a close intimacy sprang up between them, greatly to the lad's advantage, for Watt's scientific knowledge set him in a more systematic groove of study, and encouraged him to concentrate his energies on his favourite pursuit.