m, 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 compleat 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, evading
as much as I could the common attendance on public worship which my
father used to exact on 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 practise 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 of preparing
some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty
pudding, and a few others, and then proposed to my brother, that if he
would give me, weekly, half the money he paid for my board, I would
board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I
could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund for
buying books. But I had another advantage in it. My brother and the
rest going from the printing-house to their meals