nse as reading a religious book he unwarily added:
"If you _will_ read, get up in the morning and read. You may get up in
the morning as early as you like."

That night I went to bed wishing with all my heart and soul that
somebody or something might call me out of sleep to avail myself of
this wonderful indulgence; and next morning to my joyful surprise I
awoke before father called me. A boy sleeps soundly after working all
day in the snowy woods, but that frosty morning I sprang out of bed as
if called by a trumpet blast, rushed downstairs, scarce feeling my
chilblains, enormously eager to see how much time I had won; and when
I held up my candle to a little clock that stood on a bracket in the
kitchen I found that it was only one o'clock. I had gained five hours,
almost half a day "Five hours to myself!" I said, "five huge, solid
hours!" I can hardly think of any other event in my life, any
discovery I ever made that gave birth to joy so transportingly
glorious as the possession of these five frosty hours.

In the glad, tumultuous excitement of so much suddenly acquired
time-wealth, I hardly knew what to do with it. I first thought of
going on with my reading, but the zero weather would make a fire
necessary, and it occurred to me that father might object to the cost
of firewood that took time to chop. Therefore, I prudently decided to
go down cellar, and begin work on a model of a self-setting sawmill I
had invented. Next morning I managed to get up at the same gloriously
early hour, and though the temperature of the cellar was a little
below the freezing point, and my light was only a tallow candle the
mill work went joyfully on. There were a few tools in a corner of the
cellar,--a vise, files, a hammer, chisels, etc., that father had
brought from Scotland, but no saw excepting a coarse crooked one that
was unfit for sawing dry hickory or oak. So I made a fine-tooth saw
suitable for my work out of a strip of steel that had formed part of
an old-fashioned corset, that cut the hardest wood smoothly. I also
made my own bradawls, punches, and a pair of compasses, out of wire
and old files.

My workshop was immediately under father's bed, and the filing and
tapping in making cogwheels, journals, cams, etc., must, no doubt,
have annoyed him, but with the permission he had granted in his mind,
and doubtless hoping that I would soon tire of getting up at one
o'clock, he impatiently waited about two weeks before saying a