Excerpt from Chimes From Nature A great and manifest change, amounting to a thorough mental and religious resurrection, came over Mr. Burns when about twenty years of age. He then awakened to an earnest sense of his manifold deficiencies. He became sensible of the utterly neglected and uncultivated state of his intellectual faculties. He felt that he knew nothing, and had learned nothing, but implicit obedience to the calls of routine, drudgery, and bondage. The simplest elements of education, except reading, were entirely beyond the boundaries of his acquired knowledge. But, no sooner was he impressed with the conviction of his deplorable condition, than he set himself manfully to rectify the evil. Without teacher, or any assistance whatever, he applied himself to the study of arithmetic, writing, grammar, phonography, and composition and, whilst thus engaged in his searching after all knowledge, he abandoned the plough, and joined the police force of Newcastle. Shortly after the institution of our School Board, he was appointed one of its officers, the duties of which situation he at present discharges. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.