He could not afford to have his food cooked for him on the small pay
that he got as a boy at the works, but he manufactured his own
cooking-stove and found that with its help he was able to live on ten
shillings a week.
He worked so well in the shop that the manager raised his wages to
fifteen shillings a week. But as he had found that he could live on
ten shillings, he put by the extra five shillings each week in the
bank, and all the time he kept making tools for himself in his spare
hours, and eventually started himself in business on his own account
with his own money and his own tools, and finally invented his
celebrated steam hammer.
By the time he was forty-eight, he had made a big income and quite a
fortune. Many men would not have been content with this, but would
have gone on until they became millionaires. But Nasmyth did not, he
was content to retire from hard work with sufficient money to buy a
happy home, where he went in for making telescopes and studying
astronomy and also in doing good turns to people not so well off as
himself.
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