This was a very unpromising beginning of a life; and yet this same
Drew, scapegrace, orchard-robber, shoemaker, cudgel-player, and
smuggler, outlived the recklessness of his youth and became
distinguished as a minister of the Gospel and a writer of good
books. Happily, before it was too late, the energy which
characterised him was turned into a more healthy direction, and
rendered him as eminent in usefulness as he had before been in
wickedness. His father again took him back to St. Austell, and
found employment for him as a journeyman shoemaker. Perhaps his
recent escape from death had tended to make the young man serious,
as we shortly find him attracted by the forcible preaching of Dr.
Adam Clarke, a minister of the Wesleyan Methodists. His brother
having died about the same time, the impression of seriousness was
deepened; and thenceforward he was an altered man. He began anew
the work of education, for he had almost forgotten how to read and
write; and even after several years' practice, a friend compared
his writing to the traces of a spider dipped in ink set to crawl
upon paper. Speaking of himself, about that time, Drew afterwards
said, "The more I read, the more I felt my own ignorance; and the
more I felt my ignorance, the more invincible became my energy to
surmount it.
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