His compensation as out-door clerk enabled him to employ a man to teach
him at night, and, by continued study and attention to business,
he was soon promoted.
After three years in his new home, Jerome was placed in a still higher
position, where his salary amounted to fifteen hundred dollars a year.
The drinking, smoking, and other expensive habits, which the clerks
usually indulged in, he carefully avoided.
Being fond of poetry, he turned his attention to literature.
Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," the writings of Dryden, Addison, Pope,
Clarendon, and other authors of celebrity, he read with attention.
The knowledge which he thus picked up during his leisure hours gave
him a great advantage over the other clerks, and caused his employers
to respect him far more than any other in their establishment.
So eager was he to improve the time that he determined to see how much
he could read during the unemployed time of night and morning,
and his success was beyond his expectations.
CHAPTER XXX
NEW FRIENDS
BROKEN down in health, after ten years of close confinement in his situation,
Jerome resolved to give it up, and thereby release himself from an employment
which seemed calculated to send him to a premature grave.
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