Poverty and experience were teaching the child what he
never could have learned in a grammar-school, a certain acquaintance
with himself and the world around him. There was growing within his
breast a self-care and a self-reliance. It was the autumn of 1818, when,
so to speak, the boy's primary education in the school of experience
terminated, and he entered on the second stage of his training under the
same rough tutelage. At the age of thirteen he entered the office of the
Newburyport _Herald_ to learn to set types. At last his boy's hands had
found work which his boy's heart did joy to have done. He soon mastered
the compositor's art, became a remarkably rapid composer. As he set up
the thoughts of others, he was not slow in discovering thoughts of his
own demanding utterance. The printer's apprentice felt the stirrings of
a new life. A passion for self-improvement took possession of him. He
began to read the English classics, study American history, follow the
currents of party politics. No longer could it be said of him that he
was not an apt pupil. He was indeed singularly apt. His intelligence
quickened marvelously. The maturing process was sudden and swift. Almost
before one knows it the boy in years has become a man in judgment and
character. This precipitate development of the intellectual life in him,
produced naturally enough an appreciable enlargement of the _ego_.
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