reakfast-time, which was
half-past seven. When the other boarders had gone to business, he sat
down to Homer's Iliad, of which he knew nothing, and with only a
dictionary to help him.

"The proudest moment of my life," he once wrote, "was when I had first
gained the full meaning of the first fifteen lines of that noble work. I
took a short triumphal walk, in favor of that exploit."

Just before the boarders came back for their dinner he put away all his
Greek and Latin books and took up a work in Italian, because it was less
likely to attract the notice of the noisy crowd. After dinner he fell
again upon his Greek, and in the evening read Spanish until bedtime. In
this way he lived and labored for three months, a solitary student in the
midst of a community of students; his mind imbued with the grandeurs and
dignity of the past while eating flapjacks and molasses at a poor tavern.

Returning to his home in New Britain, he obtained the mastership of an
academy in a town near by, but he could not bear a life wholly sedentary;
and at the end of a year abandoned his school and became what is called a
"runner" for one of the manufacturers of New Britain. This business he
pursued until he was about twenty-five years of age, when, tired of
wandering, he came home again, and set up a grocery and provision store,
in which he invested all the money he had saved. Soon came the
commercial crash of 1837, and he was involved in the widespread ruin. He
lost the whole of his capital, and had to begin the world anew.

He resolved to return to his studies in the languages of the East.
Unable to buy or find the necessary books, he tied up his effects in a
small handkerchief and walked to Boston, one hundred miles distant,
hoping there to find a ship in which he could work his passage across the
ocean, and collect oriental works from port to port. He could not find a
berth. He turned back, and walked as far as Worcester, where he found
work, and found something else which he liked better. There is an
antiquarian society at Worcester, with a large and peculiar library,
containing a great number of books in languages not usually studied, such
as the Icelandic, the Russian, the Celtic dialects, and others. The
directors of the society placed all their treasures at his command, and
he now divided his time between hard study of languages and hard labor at
the forge. To show how he passed his days, I will copy an entry or two
from