Many years ago, a boy of sixteen sat in a little room in an old farm-house up among the Connecticut[48] hills, writing busily in a book made of odd bits of paper stitched together, with a cover formed of two thin boards. The lid of a blue chest was his desk, the end of a tallow candle stuck into a potato was his lamp, a mixture of soot¹ and vinegar his ink, and a quill² from the gray goose his pen. A "Webster's Spelling-book," "Dilworth's New Guide to the English Tongue," "Daboll's Arithmetic," and the "American Preceptor," stood on the chimney-piece over his head, with the "Assembly Catechism," and New Testament³, in the place of honor. This was his library; and now and then a borrowed "Pilgrim's Progress," "Fox's Book of Martyrs," or some stray volume, gladdened his heart; for he passionately⁴ loved books, and scoured⁵ the neighborhood for miles around to feed this steadily⁶ increasing hunger. Every penny he could earn or save went to buy a song or a story from the peddlers who occasionally climbed the hill to the solitary⁸ farm-house. When others took a noon-spell, he read under the trees or by the fire. He carried a book in his pocket, and studied as he went with the cows to and from the pasture, and sat late in his little room, ciphering on an old slate⁹, or puzzling his young brain over some question which no one could answer for him.