day before him was like poison in his heart! He could
not live as his fellow-workmen did, coming home to satisfy his hunger
and spend a couple of hours in recreation, then to well-earned sleep.
Every minute of freedom, of time in which he was no longer a machine
but a thinking and desiring man, he held precious as fine gold. How
could he yield to heaviness and sleep, when books lay open before him,
and Knowledge, the goddess of his worship, whispered wondrous promises?
To Gilbert, a printed page was as the fountain of life; he loved
literature passionately, and hungered to know the history of man's mind
through all the ages. This distinguished him markedly from the not
uncommon working man who zealously pursues some chosen branch of study.
Such men ordinarily take up subjects of practical bearing; physical
science is wont to be their field; or if they study history it is from
the point of view of current politics. Taste for literature pure and
simple, and disinterested love of historical search, are the rarest
things among the self-taught; naturally so, seeing how seldom they come
of anything but academical tillage of the right soil. The average man
of education is fond of literature because the environment of his
growth has made such fondness a second nature. Gilbert had conceived
his passion by mere grace. It had developed in him slowly. At twenty
years he was a young fellow of seemingly rather sluggish character,
without social tendencies, without the common ambitions of his class,
much given to absence of mind. About that time he came across one of
the volumes of the elder D'Israeli, and, behold, he had found himself.
Reading of things utterly unknown to him, he was inspired with strange
delights; a mysterious fascination drew him on amid names which were
only a sound; a great desire was born in him, and its object was seen
in every volume that met his eye. Had he then been given means and
leisure, he would have become at the least a man of noteworthy
learning. No such good fortune awaited him. Daily his thirteen hours
went to the manufacture of candles, and the evening leisure, with one
free day in the week, was all he could ever hope for.

At five-and-twenty he had a grave illness. Insufficient rest and
ceaseless trouble of spirit brought him to death's door. For a long
time it seemed as if he must content himself with earning his bread. He
had no right to call upon others to bear the burden of his needs. His
brot