London with Mr. Thomas, to desire me to use what little influence I
had with Charles Grant, Esq., to procure them licence to go in the
Company's ships as missionaries to the British settlements in India,
perhaps in 1792. My little influence was of no avail. What I said
of Mr. Carey so far satisfied Mr. Grant that he said, if Mr. Carey
was going alone, or with one equally to be depended on along with
him, he would not oppose him; but his strong disapprobation of Mr.
T., on what ground I knew not, induced his negative. I believe Mr.
Old died soon after I left Olney, if not just before; and his shop,
which was a little building apart from the house, was suffered to go
to decay. While in this state I several times passed it, and said
to my sons and others with me, that is Mr. Carey's college."

This cobbler's shed which was Carey's college has been since
restored, but two of the original walls still stand, forming the
corner in which he sat, opposite the window that looks out into the
garden he carefully kept. Here, when his second master died, Carey
succeeded to the business, charging himself with the care of the
widow, and marrying the widow's sister, Dorothy or Dolly Placket.
He was only twenty when he took upon himself such burdens, in the
neighbouring church of Piddington, a village to which he afterwards
moved his shop. Never had minister, missionary, or scholar a less
sympathetic mate, due largely to that latent mental disease which in
India carried her off; but for more than twenty years the husband
showed her loving reverence. As we stand in the Hackleton shed,
over which Carey placed the rude signboard prepared by his own
hands, and now in the library of Regent's Park College, "Second Hand
Shoes Bought and--,"2 we can realise the low estate to which Carey
fell, even below his father's loom and schoolhouse, and from which
he was called to become the apostle of North India as Schwartz was