It was burnt into my heart then that my father, though neither "abject, mean, nor vile," as Burns has it, had nevertheless to "Beg a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil." And then and there came the resolve that I would cure that when I got to be a man.

We were not, however, reduced to anything like poverty compared with many of our neighbors.

I do not know to what lengths of privation my mother would not have gone that she might see her two boys wearing large white collars, and trimly dressed.
In an incautious moment my parents had promised that I should never be sent to school until I asked leave to go.

This promise I afterward learned began to give them considerable uneasiness because as I grew up I showed no disposition to ask.

The schoolmaster, Mr.Robert Martin, was applied to and induced to take some notice of me.