d, making short hints of the sentiment in each
sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the
book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted
sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in
any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my
_Spectator_ with the original, discovered some of my faults, and
corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in
recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired
before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual
occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit
the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me
under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have
tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it.
Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and,
after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them
back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into
confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best
order, before I began to form the full sentences and complete the paper.
This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing
my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and
amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in
certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve
the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might
possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was
extremely ambitious. My time for these exercises and for reading was at
night, after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays, when
I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, avoiding as much as I
could the common attendance on public worship which my father used to
exact of me when I was under his care, and which indeed I still thought
a duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practice
it.

When about 16 years of age I happened to meet with a book, written by
one Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it.
My brother, being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but boarded himself
and his apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat flesh
occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chid for my
singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon's manner