The few others who measured cloth with us were nice, bright girls, and
some of them remarkably pretty. Our work and the room itself were so
clean that in summer we could wear fresh muslin dresses, sometimes
white ones, without fear of soiling them. This slight difference of
apparel and our fewer work-hours seemed to give us a slight advantage
over the toilers in the mills opposite, and we occasionally heard
ourselves spoken of as "the cloth-room aristocracy." But that was only
in fun. Most of us had served an apprenticeship in the mills, and many
of our best friends were still there, preferring their work because it
brought them more money than we could earn.

For myself, no amount of money would have been a temptation, compared
with my precious daytime freedom. Whole hours of sunshine for reading,
for walking, for studying, for writing, for anything that I wanted to
do! The days were so lovely and so long! and yet how fast they slipped
away! I had not given up my dream of a better education, and as I could
not go to school, I began to study by myself.

I had received a pretty thorough drill in the common English branches
at the grammar school, and at my employment I only needed a little
simple arithmetic. A few of my friends were studying algebra in an
evening class, but I had no fancy for mathematics. My first wish was to
learn about English Literature, to go back to its very beginnings. It
was not then studied even in the higher schools, and I knew no one who
could give me any assistance in it, as a teacher. "Percy's Reliques"
and "Chambers' Cyclopoedia of English Literature" were in the city
library, and I used them, making extracts from Chaucer and Spenser, to
fix their peculiarities in my memory, though there was only a taste of
them to be had from the Cyclopaedia.

Shakespeare I had read from childhood, in a fragmentary way. "The
Tempest," and "Midsummer Night's Dream," and "King Lear," I had
swallowed among my fairy tales. Now I discovered that the historical
plays, notably, "Julius Caesar" and "Coriolanus," had no less
attraction for me, though of a different kind. But it was easy for me
to forget that I was trying to be a literary student, and slip off from
Belmont to Venice with Portia to witness the discomfiture of Shylock;
although I did pity the miserable Jew, and thought he might at least
have been allowed the comfort of his paltry ducats. I do not think that
any of my studying at this time was very sev