r paying for his lodgings and
clothes, he had only about seven cents a day with which to buy his food.

In the summer he jumped out of bed at five o'clock every morning, and
spent the time before the hour for beginning business in reading and
making electrical experiments. He studied French in that way too, and on
Sundays carried a French Testament to church, and read in French what
the minister read in English.

Winter came on, and the poor lad was puzzled. It was not only cold, but
entirely dark at five o'clock in the morning during the winter months,
and William, who had only seven cents a day to buy food with, could not
afford either a fire or a candle to read by. There was no other time of
day, however, that he could call his own, and so it seemed that he must
give up his reading altogether, which was a great grief to the ambitious
lad.

Just then a piece of good-luck befell him. He happened to know what is
called a "sandwich man"--that is to say, a man who walks about with
signs hanging behind and before him. One day this man made him a
proposition. The sandwich man knew a baker who, with his two sons,
carried on a small business in a cellar. The baker was fond of reading,
but had no time for it, and as he and his sons had to bake their bread
early in the morning, he proposed, through the sandwich man, to employ
William Chambers as reader. His plan was that Chambers should go to the
cellar bakery every morning at five o'clock and read to the bakers, and
for this service he promised to give the boy one hot roll each morning.
Here was double good-fortune. It enabled Chambers to go on with his
reading by the baker's light and fire, and it secured for him a
sufficient breakfast without cost.

He accepted the proposition at once, and for two and a half hours every
morning he sat on a flour-sack in the cellar, and read to the bakers by
the light of a penny candle stuck in a bottle.

Out of his small wages it was impossible for the boy to save anything,
and so, when the five years of his apprenticeship ended, he had only
five shillings in the world. Yet he determined to begin business at once
on his own account. Getting credit for ten pounds' worth of books, he
opened a little stall, and thus began what has since grown to be a great
publishing business.

He had a good deal of unoccupied time at his stall, and "in order to
pick up a few shillings," as he says, he began to write out neat copies
of poems for albums.