Feeling interested in the lad, I enquired where he came from, what he could do, and what he wanted. It appeared that his father held some subordinate position in the English House of Commons; that, being put to a trade that he disliked, the boy ran away to Canada, where he verbally apprenticed himself to a shoemaker in Toronto, whom he quitted because his master wanted him to mend shoes, while he wished to spend his time in writing poetry; and that for the last year or so he had been working on a farm. He begged me to give him a trial as an apprentice to the printing business. I had known a fellow-apprentice of my own, who was first taken in as an office-boy, subsequently acquired a little education, became a printer's-devil, and when last I heard of him, was King's printer in Australia.
Well, I told the lad, whose name was Archie, that I would try him. I was just then perplexed with the problem of making and using composition rollers in the cold winter of Canada, and in an old frame office, where it was almost impossible to keep anything from freezing. So I resolved to use a composition ball, such as may be seen in the pictures of early German printing offices, printing four duodecimo pages of book-work at one impression, and perfecting the sheet--or printing the obverse, as medallists would say--with other four pages. Archie was tall and strong--I gave him a regular drilling in the use of the ball, and after some days' practice, found I could trust him as beater at the press. Robinson Crusoe's man Friday was not a more willing, faithful, conscientious slave than was my Archie. Never absent, never grumbling, never idle; if there was no work ready for him, there was always plenty of mischief at hand. He was very fond of a tough argument; plodded on with his press-work; learnt to set type pretty well, before it was suspected that he even knew the letter boxes; studied hard at grammar and the dictionary; acquired knowledge with facility, and retained it tenaciously. He remained with me many years, and ultimately became my foreman. After the destruction of the establishment by fire in 1849, he was engaged as foreman of the University printing office of Mr. Henry Rowsell, and left there after a long term to enter the Toronto School of Medicine, then presided over by Dr. Rolph, on Richmond Street, just west of where Knox's Church now stands. After obtaining his license to practise the profession of medicine, he studied Spanish, and then went to Mexico, to practise among the semi-savages of that politically and naturally volcanic republic. There he made a little money.