or. Your son gave us a hundred dollars." "Ah!"
chuckled the rich furrier, "William has a rich father. Mine was poor."

Elihu Burritt wrote in a diary kept at Worcester, whither he went to
enjoy its library privileges, such entries as these: "Monday, June 18,
headache, 40 pages Cuvier's 'Theory of the Earth,' 64 pages of French,
11 hours' forging. Tuesday, June 19, 60 lines Hebrew, 30 Danish, 10
lines Bohemian, 9 lines Polish, 15 names of stars, 10 hours' forging.
Wednesday, June 20, 25 lines Hebrew, 8 lines Syriac, 11 hours' forging."
He mastered eighteen languages and thirty-two dialects. He became
eminent as the "Learned Blacksmith," and for his noble work in the
service of humanity. Edward Everett said of the manner in which this boy
with no chance acquired great learning: "It is enough to make one who
has good opportunities for education hang his head in shame."

"I was born in poverty," said Vice-President Henry Wilson. "Want sat by
my cradle. I know what it is to ask a mother for bread when she has none
to give. I left my home at ten years of age, and served an
apprenticeship of eleven years, receiving a month's schooling each year,
and, at the end of eleven years of hard work, a yoke of oxen and six
sheep, which brought me eighty-four dollars. I never spent the sum of
one dollar for pleasure, counting every penny from the time I was born
till I was twenty-one years of age. I know what it is to travel weary
miles and ask my fellow-men to give me leave to toil. * * * In the
first month after I was twenty-one years of age, I went into the woods,
drove a team, and cut mill-logs. I rose in the morning before daylight
and worked hard till after dark, and received the magnificent sum of six
dollars for the month's work! Each of these dollars looked as large to
me as the moon looks to-night."

"Many a farmer's son," says Thurlow Weed, "has found the best
opportunities for mental improvement in his intervals of leisure while
tending 'sap-bush.' Such, at any rate, was my own experience. At night
you had only to feed the kettles and keep up the fires, the sap having
been gathered and the wood cut before dark. During the day we would
always lay in a good stock of 'fat-pine' by the light of which, blazing
bright before the sugar-house, in the posture the serpent was condemned
to assume, as a penalty for tempting our first grandmother, I passed
many a delightful night in reading. I remember in this way to have read
a history