hands most painfully whenever he was long exposed to the sun. For
seven years he had failed to find relief. His attempt at work in
the field were for two years followed by distressing agony at night.
He was now sixteen, and his father sought out a good man who would
receive him as apprentice to the shoemaking trade. The man was not
difficult to find, in the hamlet of Hackleton, nine miles off, in
the person of one Clarke Nichols. The lad afterwards described him
as "a strict churchman and, what I thought, a very moral man. It is
true he sometimes drank rather too freely, and generally employed me
in carrying out goods on the Lord's Day morning; but he was an
inveterate enemy to lying, a vice to which I was awfully addicted."
The senior apprentice was a dissenter, and the master and his boys
gave much of the talk over their work to disputes upon religious
subjects. Carey "had always looked upon dissenters with contempt.
I had, moreover, a share of pride sufficient for a thousand times
my knowledge; I therefore always scorned to have the worst in an
argument, and the last word was assuredly mine. I also made up in
positive assertion what was wanting in argument, and generally came
off with triumph. But I was often convinced afterwards that
although I had the last word my antagonist had the better of the
argument, and on that account felt a growing uneasiness and stings
of conscience gradually increasing." The dissenting apprentice was
soon to be the first to lead him to Christ.

William Carey was a shoemaker during the twelve years of his life
from sixteen to twenty-eight, till he went to Leicester. Poverty,
which the grace of God used to make him a preacher also from his
eighteenth year, compelled him to work with his hands in leather all
the week, and to tramp many a weary mile to Northampton and
Kettering carrying the product of his labour. At one time, when