gave him his first lessons in botany and horticulture. He soon
became responsible for his father's official garden, till it was the
best kept in the neighbourhood. Wherever after that he lived, as
boy or man, poor or in comfort, William Carey made and perfected his
garden, and always for others, until he created at Serampore the
botanical park which for more than half a century was unique in
Southern Asia.

We have in a letter from the Manse, Paulerspury, a tradition of the
impression made on the dull rustics by the dawning genius of the
youth whom they but dimly comprehended. He went amongst them under
the nickname of Columbus, and they would say, "Well, if you won't
play, preach us a sermon," which he would do. Mounting on an old
dwarf witch-elm about seven feet high, where several could sit, he
would hold forth. This seems to have been a resort of his for
reading, his favourite occupation. The same authority tells how,
when suffering toothache, he allowed his companions to drag the
tooth from his head with a violent jerk, by tying around it a string
attached to a wheel used to grind malt, to which they gave a sharp
turn.

The boy's own peculiar room was a little library as well as museum
of natural history. He possessed a few books, which indeed were
many for those days, but he borrowed more from the whole
country-side. Recalling the eight years of his intellectual
apprenticeship till he was fourteen, from the serene height of his
missionary standard, he wrote long after:--"I chose to read books of
science, history, voyages, etc., more than any others. Novels and
plays always disgusted me, and I avoided them as much as I did books
of religion, and perhaps from the same motive. I was better pleased