It flowed from him without effort, and gave a
charm to his ordinary conversation. Though living in the city during his
teens, he spent as much of his time at home as he possibly could. He
loved the woods, and as he seldom got away from work on a week day, he
often spent Sundays among the trees in preference to attending the
terribly long-drawn-out Sandemanian service.

His apprenticeship itself was a process of self-education. He worked the
press from morn till night, and found in the dull metal the knowledge and
the power he loved. One woman--a relative--taught him French. With {20}
other women, who were attracted by his brightness, he read the early
English dramatists and the more modern poets, especially Campbell, Mrs
Hemans, and Byron. He delighted in fun and frolic and sports of all
kinds, and was at the head of everything. But amid all his reading and
his companionships elsewhere, he never forgot home. He would go out to
it in the evening, as often as he could, and after a long swim in the Arm
would spend the night with his father. One evening his love for home
saved him from drowning. Running out from town and down to the water
below the house, he plunged in as usual, but, when a little distance out
from shore, was seized with cramp. The remedies in such a case--to kick
vigorously or throw oneself on one's back and float--are just the
remedies a man feels utterly unable at the time to try. He was alone and
drowning when, his eye being turned at the moment to the cottage upon the
hillside, he saw the candle for the night just being placed on the
window-sill. The light arrested him, and 'there will be sorrow there
to-morrow when I'm missed' passed through his mind. The thought made him
give so fierce a kick that he fairly kicked the cramp out of his leg. A
few strokes {21} brought him to the shore, where he sank down utterly
exhausted with excitement.

Had he been anything of a coward, this experience would have kept him
from solitary swims for the rest of his life. But he was too fond of the
water to give it up so easily. When working in after years at his own
paper, midnight often found him at the desk or at the press. After such
toil most young men would have gone upstairs (for he lived above his
office then) and thrown themselves on their beds, all tired and soiled
with ink; but for six or seven months in the year his practice was to
throw off his apron and run down to the market slip, and s