eighbor's house, when, with all
my efforts, I cannot recover my father's voice and countenance, nor many
another thing that would make a golden treasury of memory. Instead, it
is more like the lumber of an old attic, or the contents of a boy's
pocket. From much reading I began to observe the difference between
written and spoken languages, and to single out the people who used the
best speech in their common conversation. I tried myself to talk like
the books I read. Never before had I noticed any difference between men
as to education. All were on the same plane, only separable by some
personal relation to myself. Little by little they became distinct so
that I attempted to classify them in a crude and bookish way. Character
and the moral point of view, with their manifold applications to life,
were as yet hidden from me. I judged men and women by their speech, even
by their pronunciation, and thought that I could detect the accent of
the educated. In short, education became all in all to my mind; the one
desirable possession, and its end the writing of books, its reward fame.
As was natural I tried to write, but my rude penmanship, my inability to
spell the words, which I was ambitious to use, the difficulty of
beginning a sentence, and still greater perplexity of ending it,
completely disgusted me and filled me with despair. It was more evident
than ever that education was the ladder for my enterprise. There was, at
that time, in Worcester a learned blacksmith, who knew fifty languages;
he might have been an example to me; yet I had never heard of him. I
knew only the great men of Whelpley's ancient history, and the poet
Byron. Schools and colleges assumed great and greater importance. I saw
no way of educating myself: I expected it to be done for me, as
everything thus far had been. I was nearly sixteen years old, barely
able to read and write, but no more advanced than the average boy of ten
or twelve.

STUDENT LIFE

After much solicitation I persuaded my sister to send me for one term to
the Worcester Academy. This was a school then in the suburbs of the city
under the patronage of the Baptists. It had formerly been a manual labor
school; that is, students could pay their expenses by labor on a farm
belonging to the institution. This feature had been given up, and it was
conducted like other institutions of a similar character. It was
essentially a country academy, intended primarily for youths who, havin