education, I felt like a child. When discouragement came, I took
refuge in the fact that several avenues of usefulness were open to me
in army life. I had shown some proficiency in gunnery. For a steady
plodder who attends strictly to business there is always promotion. As
a flunky, there was the incentive of double pay, the wearing of plain
clothes, and some intimate touch with the aristocracy. Many a time
one of these avenues seemed the only career open for me. I hardly knew
what an education meant; but, whatever it meant, it was a long way off
and almost out of reach. One day in going over my well-marked "John
Halifax," I came across this passage:

"'What would you do, John, if you were shut up here, and had to
get over the yew hedge? You could not climb it.'

"'I know that, and therefore I should not waste time in trying.'

"'Would you give up, then?'

"He smiled: there was no 'giving up' in that smile of his. 'I'll
tell you what I'd do: I'd begin and break it, twig by twig, till I
forced my way through, and got out safe at the other side.'"

This was a new inspiration. The difficulty was not lessened by the
inspiration, but a new method appealed to me. It was the patient
plodding method of "twig by twig." The quotation from "John Halifax"
was reinforced by one of the first things I ever read of Browning:

"That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it:
This high man with a great thing to pursue,