For that reason, although still in poor health, my mother was obliged to resume her former duties, while my father was confirmed in his decision to postpone my schooldays for another three or four years. To this he had already been inclined, partly owing to the representations that I myself had been compelled to make to him, and partly owing to his desire to assist me as far as possible in bearing the crosses with which Providence had entrusted me. Far beyond the average both in weight and number, I can realize now of course what a privilege these were. But in the earlier years of my boyhood they taxed my faith to its utmost powers. Many were the times, for instance, when after a long morning’s study, merely interrupted by an occasional cup of cocoa, I turned with avidity to a simple but abundant meal of roast pork and open jam tart, only to find myself, an hour or two later, rolling in agony upon the sofa, or even indeed summoned on certain occasions to yield it back whence it came. This was perhaps the hardest lesson of all. But I am happy to say that at last I learned it. And I can well remember the pride with which my father, hurrying into the parlour with a convenient receptacle, first found me consoling myself with some appropriate verses from an early chapter of the book of Job. That incident alone, as my father often used to say, was a complete justification of his decision to postpone my school-life; and I am quite confident that, had I been earlier subjected to the propinquity of coarser-fibred boys, I should never have survived to render adult service to the men and women of my time. Nor should I have made, I am sure, such intellectual progress as I achieved between my sixth and eleventh birthdays. Familiar from cover to cover not only with the Holy Bible, but also with the Apocrypha, I had attained dexterity in simple division, was acquainted with the geography of the British Isles, and had read the history of England so far as the reign of Queen Anne. Passionately devoted to music, I had taught myself to play from memory the airs of a large number of well-known hymns, including several of the more rapid and accentuated of the late Messrs. Moody and Sankey. Subject to my father’s guidance, too, I ranged in boyish fashion amongst literature of a lighter order. With some of the works of Longfellow, for instance, I was soon so familiar as to be able to repeat them without a mistake, and I can still recall the delight with which I read a work of fiction in which Martin Luther was one of the characters portrayed.