this taste by means of a small village library, which
contained several books of history, of which he was naturally fond. This
boy, however, was a shy, devoted student, brave to maintain what he
thought right, but so bashful that he was known to hide in the cellar
when his parents were going to have company.

As his father's long sickness had kept him out of school for some time,
he was the more earnest to learn during his apprenticeship; particularly
mathematics, since he desired to become, among other things, a good
surveyor. He was obliged to work from ten to twelve hours a day at the
forge; but while he was blowing the bellows he employed his mind in
doing sums in his head. His biographer gives a specimen of these
calculations which he wrought out without making a single figure:--

"How many yards of cloth, three feet in width, cut into strips an inch
wide, and allowing half an inch at each end for the lap, would it
require to reach from the centre of the earth to the surface, and how
much would it all cost at a shilling a yard?"

He would go home at night with several of these sums done in his head,
and report the results to an elder brother who had worked his way
through Williams College. His brother would perform the calculations
upon a slate, and usually found his answers correct.

When he was about half through his apprenticeship he suddenly took it
into his head to learn Latin, and began at once through the assistance
of the same elder brother. In the evenings of one winter he read the
AEneid of Virgil; and, after going on for a while with Cicero and a few
other Latin authors, he began Greek. During the winter months he was
obliged to spend every hour of daylight at the forge, and even in the
summer his leisure minutes were few and far between. But he carried his
Greek grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting
for a large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black
fingers, and go through a pronoun, an adjective or part of a verb,
without being noticed by his fellow-apprentices.

So he worked his way until he was out of his time, when he treated
himself to a whole quarter's schooling at his brother's school, where he
studied mathematics, Latin and other languages. Then he went back to the
forge, studying hard in the evenings at the same branches, until he had
saved a little money; when he resolved to go to New Haven, and spend a
winter in study. It was far from his th