At the end of the vacation he returned to college, leaving his measure with
Halleck's tailor, and his heart with all the splendors and elegances of the
town. He found the ceilings very low and the fashions much belated in the
village; but he reconciled himself as well as he could. The real stress
came when he left college and the question of doing something for himself
pressed upon him. He intended to study law, but he must meantime earn his
living. It had been his fortune to be left, when very young, not only an
orphan, but an extremely pretty child, with an exceptional aptness for
study; and he had been better cared for than if his father and mother had
lived. He had been not only well housed and fed, and very well dressed, but
pitied as an orphan, and petted for his beauty and talent, while he was
always taught to think of himself as a poor boy, who was winning his own
way through the world. But when his benefactor proposed to educate him for
the ministry, with a view to his final use in missionary work, he revolted.
He apprenticed himself to the printer of his village, and rapidly picked up
a knowledge of the business, so that at nineteen he had laid by some money,
and was able to think of going to college. There was a fund in aid of
indigent students in the institution to which he turned, and the faculty
favored him. He finished his course with great credit to himself and the
college, and he was naturally inclined to look upon what had been done for
him earlier as an advantage taken of his youthful inexperience. He rebelled
against the memory of that tutelage, in spite of which he had accomplished
such great things. If he had not squandered his time or fallen into vicious
courses in circumstances of so much discouragement, if he had come out of
it all self-reliant and independent, he knew whom he had to thank for it.
The worst of the matter was that there was some truth in all this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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