h any school or
institution. I taught them the Bible stories and helped them to
memorize the texts that I had learned myself.

Despite the fact that I was now clean and well groomed, I could not
help comparing my life to the life of the horses I was attending,
especially with regard to their sleeping accommodations. The slightest
speck of dirt of any kind around their bedding was an indictment of
the grooming. The stables were beautifully flagged and sprinkled with
fine, white sand. The mangers were kept cleaner than anything in the
houses of the poor, and, when I trotted a mount out into the yard, the
master would take out his white silk handkerchief, run it along the
horse's side, and then examine it. If the handkerchief was soiled in
the slightest degree, the horse was sent back. Probably not once in a
year was a horse returned under such circumstances. The regularity of
meals was another point of comparison, and the daily washings,
brushings, groomings.

It meant something to be a horse in that stable--much more than it
meant to be a groom. When these points of comparison arose, I pushed
them back as evil and discontent with the will of God. This master man
used to talk to his horses, but he seldom talked to his grooms.
Sometimes I was permitted the luxury of a look at the great
dining-hall, or the drawing-rooms. That also was another world to me,
a world of beauty for God's good people. Even the butlers, footmen,
and other flunkies were superior people, and I envied them, not only
the uniform of their servitude but their intimate touch with that
inner world of beautiful things.

I spent one winter at the big house, and then the shame of my
ignorance drove me forever from the haunts of my childhood. I entered
the city of Belfast, seventeen miles distant, and became coachman and
groom to a man who, by the selling of clothes, had reached the
economic status of owning a horse. In adapting himself to this new
condition, he dressed me in livery, and, after I had taught him to
drive, I sat beside him in the buggy with folded arms, arrayed in a
tall hat with a cockade. The wages in this new position were so small
that when I had paid for my room and meagre board, I had nothing left
for the support of my brothers and sisters, who were still in dire
poverty.

The young lady I had met on the farm lived in this city and in my
neighbourhood; but I would have considered it a matter of gross
discourtesy to call on her, or,