I buried my head in the miserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child." But Cobbett made even his poverty and hard circumstances serve his all-absorbing passion for knowledge and success.

"If I," said he, "under such circumstances could encounter and overcome this task, is there, can there be in the whole world, a youth to find any excuse for its non-performance ?" Humphrey Davy had but a slender chance to acquire great scientific knowledge, yet he had true mettle in him, and he made even old pans, kettles, and bottles contribute to his success, as he experimented and studied in the attic of the apothecary-store where he worked.
"Many a farmer's son," says Thurlow Weed, "has found the best opportunities for mental improvement in his intervals of leisure while tending 'sap-bush.' Such, at any rate, was my own experience.

At night you had only to feed the kettles and keep up the fires, the sap having been gathered and the wood cut before dark.

During the day we would always lay in a good stock of 'fat-pine,' by the light of which, blazing bright before the sugar-house, I passed many a delightful night in reading.

I remember in this way to have a history of the French Revolution, and to have obtained a better and more enduring knowledge of its events and horrors and of the actors in that great national tragedy than I have received from all subsequent reading.