Excerpt from Life-Stories of Famous Men: George Jacob Holyoake Holyoake was born in Birmingham on April 13, 1817. He was the son of a foreman in the Eagle Foundry, who wore drab breeches and shining top-boots of a Sunday. His mother, a pious woman, ran a button-making business in a shed at the rear of the house. It was, therefore, for the time, a comfortable home. Probably it enjoyed a revenue of thirty shillings a week. There was more of Jacob than of St. George about the child in those days. He grew in piety and good nature so promisingly that they called him the angel-child. At the age of seven he learned the art of reading in the school of an old dame - who probably could not write. At the age of eight he began, after school hours, to solder the handles on tin lanterns and help to make buttons. At the age of nine he commenced to work in the Eagle Foundry, from six in the morning until six in the evening, including Saturdays; and he spent the Sunday in church or over religious books. He attended the Wesleyan Sunday School until he was fifteen, and continued to learn to read, but not to write. 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.