Then imagine the pain of shovelling coal and trundling a loaded wheelbarrow with two sprained wrists.
Work! More than once I sank down on the coal where no one could see me, and cried with rage, and mortification, and exhaustion, and despair.
That second day was my hardest, and all that enabled me to survive it and get in the last of the night coal at the end of thirteen hours was the day fireman, who bound both my wrists with broad leather straps.

So tightly were they buckled that they were like slightly flexible plaster casts.

They took the stresses and pressures which hitherto had been borne by my wrists, and they were so tight that there was no room for the inflammation to rise in the sprains.
And in this fashion I continued to learn to be an electrician.

Night after night I limped home, fell asleep before I could eat my supper, and was helped into bed and undressed.

Morning after morning, always with huger lunches in my dinner pail, I limped out of the house on my way to work.
I no longer read my library books.