To accustom me to money matters, child as I was, my father placed gold
and silver in my keeping, and whatever I spent was to be accounted for.
In this way money was not to be an imaginary thing for me, but a real
thing, and I was not to lose the control of myself because I had my
pocket full of sovereigns. This was a very original scheme in its
application to so young a child, but it perfectly succeeded, and I never
either lost or misapplied one halfpenny of the sums my father entrusted
to my keeping. He was evidently pleased with his success in this.

There was a village school near his house kept by a respectable man for
children of both sexes, and there I was sent to practise calligraphy and
arithmetic. During school-hours there was at least complete relief from
the paternal supervision, and besides this I managed to fall in love
with a girl about a year older than myself, who was a very nice girl
indeed, though she squinted to an unfortunate degree. That is the great
advantage of having the young of both sexes in the same schoolroom,--the
manners of the brutal sex may be made tender by the presence of the
refined one. Boys and girls both went to the Grammar School at Burnley,
in the now forgotten days when Mr. Raws was head-master there; but that
was long before my time.

My existence at Ivy Cottage was one of extreme dulness varied by dread.
Every meal was a _tete-a-tete_ with my father, unrelieved by the
presence of any lady or young person, and he became more and more gloomy
as his nervous system gradually gave way, so that after having been
simply stern and unbending, he was now like a black cloud always hanging
over me and ready, as it seemed, to be my destruction in some way or
other not yet clearly defined. It was an immense relief to me when a
guest came to dinner, and I remember being once very much interested in