JOHN BRIGHT.
Seventy years ago a boy was born in Rochdale, England, who was destined to fill a great place in the world. His parents were Jacob and Martha Bright—people of good old Quaker stock—and they called their eldest boy simply John.
Jacob Bright was a cotton manufacturer, and both he and his wife were beloved for their charitable deeds. One Sunday Mrs. Bright and little John were walking out, and the boy wore his pair of long trousers for the first time. Of course he felt proud of them. But soon they met a poor woman with her little boy, and he was clothed in rags. Mrs. Bright stopped them, and the result of a few minutes' conversation was that the poor woman and her ragged son returned home with them, and Master John had to strip off his new suit and let the other boy put it on in place of his rags. Mrs. Bright's charity was very thorough.
At school young John was quick and industrious, but his father thought business more important than book-learning; so at fifteen the boy was placed in his father's cotton mill. Fortunately for himself and the world he did not give up learning from books when he left school, or he would not have been the great man he is.
As a boy and a young man he was a good cricketer, and all his life he has been very fond of fishing, having caught minnows and other small fish in the river that ran by his home, and salmon of forty pounds weight in Scotland and in Norway. At twenty-two years of age he began training himself in public speaking in a literary society of which he was one of the founders, and doubtless it is to this early training that he owes the honor of being the greatest of living English orators.
Mr. Bright was first elected a member of Parliament in 1843, and fourteen years later he was chosen to represent the great manufacturing town of Birmingham, which seat he still occupies.
Mr. Bright's public life has been a busy and a useful one. No man has done more for the benefit of the working classes than he, and he has never hesitated in the pursuit of the course which he felt to be the right one.
In this country the name of John Bright is justly honored, for he was the only English statesman who supported the Union without wavering during the late war between the North and the South. Six weeks ago (November 16), Mr. Bright celebrated his seventieth birthday.