spent on the tea and coffee slops and in the mere
gossip which accompany them; those wasted hours of
only one year, employed in the study of English
grammar, would make you a correct speaker and writer
for the rest of your life. You want no school,
no room to study in, no expenses, and no troublesome
circumstances of any sort. I learned grammar
when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence
a day. The edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed,
was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my book-case;
a bit of board, lying on my lap, was my writing-table;
and the task did not demand any thing like a year
of my life. I had no money to purchase candle
or oil; in winter-time it was rarely that I could
get any evening-light but that of the fire,
and only my turn even of that. And if I,
under such circumstances, and without parent or friend
to advise or encourage me, accomplished this undertaking,
what excuse can there be for any youth, however
poor, however pressed with business, or however circumstanced
as to room or other conveniences? To buy a pen
or a sheet of paper I was compelled to forego some
portion of food, though in a state of half-starvation;
I had no moment of time that I could call my own; and
I had to read and to write amidst the talking, laughing,
singing, whistling and brawling of at least half a
score of the most thoughtless of men, and that too
in the hours of their freedom from all control.
Think not lightly of the farthing that I had
to give, now and then, for ink, pen, or paper!
That farthing was, alas! a great sum to me!
I was as tall as I am now; I had great health and
great exercise. The whole of the money, not expended
for us at market, was two-pence a week for
each man. I remember, and well I may! that upon
one occasion I, after all absolutely necessary expenses,
had, on a Friday, made shift to have a halfpenny in
reserve, which I had destined for the purchase of
a red-herring in the morning; but, when I pulled
off my clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly
able to endure life, I found that I had lost my
halfpenny! I buried my head under the miserable
sheet and rug, and cried like a child! And, again
I say, if I, under circumstances like these, could
encounter and overcome this task, is there, can there
be, in the whole world, a youth to find an excuse for
the non-performance? What youth, who shall read
this, will not be ashamed to say, that he is not able
to find time and opportunity for this most essential
of all the branches of book-learning?
45. I press this matter with such earnestness, because a knowledge of grammar is the foundation of all literature; and because without this knowledge opportunities for writing and speaking are only occasions for men to display their unfitness to write and speak. How many false pretenders to erudition, have I exposed to shame merely by my knowledge of grammar! How many of the insolent and ignorant great and powerful