and write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling,
and bawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of men,
and that, too, in the hours of their freedom from all control. Think
not lightly of the _farthing_ I had to give, now and then, for pen,
ink, or paper. That farthing was, alas! a great sum to me. I was as
tall as I am now, and I had great health and great exercise. The whole
of the money not expended for us at market was _twopence a week_ for
each man. I remember, and well I may! that upon one occasion I had,
after all absolutely necessary expenses, made shift to have a
half-penny in reserve, which I had destined for the purpose of a red
herring in the morning, but so hungry as to be hardly able to endure
life, when I pulled off my clothes at night, I found that I had lost my
half-penny. I buried my head in the miserable sheet and rug, and cried
like a child."

But Cobbett made even his poverty and hard circumstances serve his
all-absorbing passion for knowledge and success. "If I," said he,
"under such circumstances could encounter and overcome this task, is
there, can there be in the whole world, a youth to find any excuse for
its non-performance?"

Humphrey Davy had but a slender chance to acquire great scientific
knowledge, yet he had true mettle in him, and he made even old pans,
kettles, and bottles contribute to his success, as he experimented and
studied in the attic of the apothecary-store where he worked.

"Many a farmer's son," says Thurlow Weed, "has found the best
opportunities for mental improvement in his intervals of leisure while
tending 'sap-bush.' Such, at any rate, was my own experience. At
night you had only to feed the kettles and keep up the fires, the sap
having been gathered and the wood cut before dark. During the day we
would always lay in a good stock of 'fat-pine,' by the light of which,
blazing bright before the sugar-house, I passed many a delightful night
in reading. I remember in this way to have a history of the French
Revolution, and to have obtained a better and more enduring knowledge
of its events and horrors and of the actors in that great national
tragedy than I have received from all subsequent reading. I remember,
also, how happy I was in being able to borrow the books of a Mr. Keyes,
after a two-mile tramp through the snow, shoeless, my feet swaddled in
remnants of rag carpet."

"May I have a holiday to-morrow, father?" asked Theodore