For myself, no amount of money would have been a temptation,
compared with my precious daytime freedom. Whole hours of
sunshine for reading, for walking, for studying, for writing, for
anything that I wanted to do! The days were so lovely and so
long! and yet how fast they slipped away! I had not given up my
dream of a better education, and as I could not go to school, I
began to study by myself.
I had received a pretty thorough drill in the common English
branches at the grammar school, and at my employment I only
needed a little simple arithmetic. A few of my friends were
studying algebra in an evening class, but I had no fancy for
mathematics. My first wish was to learn about English Literature,
to go back to its very beginnings. It was not then studied even
in the higher schools, and I knew no one who could give me any
assistance in it, as a teacher. "Percy's Reliques" and "Chambers'
Cyclopoedia of English Literature " were in the city library, and
I used them, making extracts from Chaucer and Spenser, to fix
their peculiarities in my memory, though there was only a taste
of them to be had from the Cyclopaedia.
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