of his career he described himself as a person
"who, a few years since, began business with five pounds, and now sells
one hundred thousand volumes annually." But in fact he did not begin
business with five pounds, but with nothing at all.

He was the son of a drunken shoemaker who lived in an English country
town, and he had no schooling except a few weeks at a dame's school, at
twopence a week. He had scarcely learned his letters at that school when
his mother was obliged to take him away to help her in tending his
little brothers and sisters. He spent most of his childhood in doing
that, and, as he remarks, "in running about the streets getting into
mischief." When he was ten years old he felt the stirring of an inborn
genius for successful traffic.

He noticed, and no doubt with the hungry eyes of a growing boy, an old
pie-man, who sold his pies about the streets in a careless, inefficient
way, and the thought occurred to him that, if he had pies to sell, he
could sell more of them than the ancient pie-man. He went to a baker and
acquainted him with his thoughts on pie-selling, and the baker soon sent
him out with a tray full of pies. He showed his genius at once. The
spirited way in which he cried his pies, and his activity in going about
with them, made him a favorite with the pie-buyers of the town; so that
the old pie-man in a few weeks lost all his business, and shut up his
shop. The boy served his baker more than a year, and sold so many pies
and cakes for him as to save him from impending bankruptcy. In the
winter time he sold almanacs with such success that the other dealers
threatened to do him bodily mischief.

But this kind of business would not do to depend on for a lifetime, and
therefore he was bound apprentice to a shoemaker at the age of fourteen
years, during which a desire for more knowledge arose within him. He
learned to read and write, but was still so ashamed of his ignorance
that he did not dare to go into a bookstore because he did not know the
name of a single book to ask for. One of his friends bought for him a
little volume containing a translation from the Greek philosopher
Epictetus, a work full of wise maxims about life and duty. Then he
bought other ancient authors, Plato, Plutarch, Epicurus, and others. He
became a sort of Methodist philosopher, for he heard the Methodist
preachers diligently on Sundays, and read his Greek philosophy in the
evenings. He tells us that the account of