My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

—I30MY LIFEmy brother John went down to Neath to the funeral,and as William had died without a will, we had totake out letters of administration. Finding from mybrother's papers that he had obtained a small localbusiness, and that there was railway work in prospect,I determined to take his place, and at once askedpermission of Mr. Hill to be allowed to leave atEaster.My two years spent at Leicester had been in manyways useful to me, and had also a determining influenceon my whole future life. It satisfied me thatI had no vocation for teaching, for though I performedmy duties I believe quite to Mr. Hill's satisfaction, Ifelt myself out of place, partly because I knew nosubject—with the one exception of surveyingsufficiently well to be able to teach it properly, butmainly because a completely subordinate positionwas distasteful to me, although I could not have hada more considerate employer than Mr. Hill. Thetime and opportunity I had for reading was a greatadvantage, and gave me an enduring love of goodliterature. The events which formed a turning-pointin my life were, first, my acquaintance with Bates,and through him deriving a taste for the wonders ofinsect-life, opening to me a new aspect of nature, andlater on finding in him a companion without whom Imight never have ventured on my journey to theAmazon. The other and equally important circumstancewas my reading Malthus, without which workI should probably not have hit upon the theory ofnatural selection and obtained full credit for itsindependent discovery. My two years spent atLeicester must, therefore, be considered as perhapsthe most important in my early life.At Easter I bade farewell to Leicester and went