was obliged to work from ten to twelve hours a day at the
forge, but while he was blowing the bellows he employed his mind in doing
sums in his head. His biographer gives a specimen of these calculations
which he wrought out without making a single figure:

"How many yards of cloth, three feet in width, cut into strips an inch
wide, and allowing half an inch at each end for the lap, would it require
to reach from the centre of the earth to the surface, and how much would
it all cost at a shilling a yard?"

He would go home at night with several of these sums done in his head,
and report the results to an elder brother, who had worked his way
through Williams College. His brother would perform the calculations
upon a slate, and usually found his answers correct.

When he was about half through his apprenticeship he suddenly took it
into his head to learn Latin, and began at once through the assistance of
the same elder brother. In the evenings of one winter he read the Aeneid
of Virgil; and, after going on for a while with Cicero and a few other
Latin authors, he began Greek. During the winter months he was obliged
to spend every hour of daylight at the forge, and even in the summer his
leisure minutes were few and far between. But he carried his Greek
grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting for a
large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black fingers,
and go through a pronoun, an adjective, or part of a verb, without being
noticed by his fellow-apprentices.

So he worked his way until he was out of his time, when he treated
himself to a whole quarter's schooling at his brother's school, where he
studied mathematics, Latin, and other languages. Then he went back to
the forge, studying hard in the evenings at the same branches, until he
had saved a little money, when he resolved to go to New Haven and spend a
winter in study. It was far from his thoughts, as it was from his means,
to enter Yale College, but he seems to have had an idea that the very
atmosphere of the college would assist him. He was still so timid that
he determined to work his way without asking the least assistance from a
professor or tutor.

He took lodgings at a cheap tavern in New Haven, and began the very next
morning a course of heroic study. As soon as the fire was made in the
sitting-room of the inn, which was at half-past four in the morning, he
took possession, and studied German until b