From watching cows and geese, the boy was in due course promoted to
the rank of team-leader, and was also set to assist his father in the
threshing barn. "John," his father used to say, "was weak but
willing," and the good man made his son a flail proportioned to his
strength. Exposure in the ill-drained fields round Helpstone brought
on an attack of tertiary ague, from which the boy had scarcely
rallied when he was again sent into the fields. Favourable weather
having set in, he recovered his health, and was able that summer to
make occasionally a few pence by working overtime. These savings were
religiously devoted to schooling, and in the following winter, he
being then in his tenth year, he attended an evening school at the
neighbouring village of Glinton. John soon became a favourite of the
master, Mr. James Merrishaw, and was allowed the run of his little
library. His passion for learning rapidly developed itself, and he
eagerly devoured every book that came in his way, his reading ranging
from "Robinson Crusoe" to "Bonnycastle's Arithmetic" and "Ward's
Algebra." He refers to this in later life when he thus speaks of the
"Village Minstrel":--

And oft, with books, spare hours he would beguile,
And blunder oft with joy round Crusoe's lonely isle.

John pursued his studies for two or three winters under the guidance
of the good-natured Merrishaw, and at the end of that time an
unsuccessful effort was made to obtain for him a situation as clerk
in the office of a solicitor at Wisbeach. After this failure he
returned contentedly to the fields, and about this time found a new
friend in the son of a small farmer named Turnill. The two youths
read together, Turnill assisting Clare with books and writing
materials. He now began to "snatch a fearful joy" by scribbling on