sins of his fathers who slept across the seas. He had been endowed at
birth with a poor constitution, a nervous, restless temperament, and an
abundance of hindering prejudices. In his boyhood his body was starved,
that his mind might be stuffed with useless learning. In his youth this
dearly gotten learning was sold, and the price was the bread and salt
which he had not been trained to earn for himself. Under the wedding
canopy he was bound for life to a girl whose features were still strange
to him; and he was bidden to multiply himself, that sacred learning
might be perpetuated in his sons, to the glory of the God of his
fathers. All this while he had been led about as a creature without a
will, a chattel, an instrument. In his maturity he awoke, and found
himself poor in health, poor in purse, poor in useful knowledge, and
hampered on all sides. At the first nod of opportunity he broke away
from his prison, and strove to atone for his wasted youth by a life of
useful labor; while at the same time he sought to lighten the gloom of
his narrow scholarship by freely partaking of modern ideas. But his
utmost endeavor still left him far from his goal. In business nothing
prospered with him. Some fault of hand or mind or temperament led him to
failure where other men found success. Wherever the blame for his
disabilities be placed, he reaped their bitter fruit. "Give me bread!"
he cried to America. "What will you do to earn it?" the challenge came
back. And he found that he was master of no art, of no trade; that even
his precious learning was of no avail, because he had only the most
antiquated methods of communicating it.

So in his primary quest he had failed. There was left him the
compensation of intellectual freedom. That he sought to realize in every
possible way. He had very little opportunity to prosecute his education,
which, in truth, had never been begun. His struggle for a bare living
left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school; but he