This arrangement, while acceptable
on the one hand, caused him actual mental and physical pain on the
other, as it increased his consciousness of the disabilities under which
he laboured in contrast with most of the other boys of his own age.
At the age of 14 Wallace was taken away from school, and until something
could be definitely decided about his future--as up to the present he
had no particular bent in any one direction--he was sent to London to
live with his brother John, who was then working for a master builder in
the vicinity of Tottenham Court Road. This was in January, 1837, and it
was during the following summer that he joined his other brother,
William, at Barton-on-the-Clay, Bedfordshire, and began land surveying.
In the meantime, while in London, he had been brought very closely into
contact with the economics and ethics of Robert Owen, the well-known
Socialist; and although very young in years he was so deeply impressed
with the reasonableness and practical outcome of these theories that,
though considerably modified as time went on, they formed the foundation
for his own writings on Socialism and allied subjects in after years.
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