Meanwhile my education was entirely neglected. I attended no school at this time, either summer or winter, and came as near acquiring a trade as I have ever done. In fact I longed to be able to make the whole of a boot, to last, peg, trim, gum, blackball and stone it, all processes of the craft as then practised. But how does one know when he is learning? I was laying up a good store of things more valuable than any in books, whilst the free life I led was preparing in me the soft and impressionable tablets on which could be traced future experiences and acquisitions of a more intellectual kind. Tomorrow would come and this was its preparation. Yet not consciously can one prepare for it all that it is to hold. I became a graduate of the shops of the bootmakers before acquiring the whole of their trade, but not before absorbing most of that which constituted the overflow of their lives. I began to imitate the manners and conversation of men. Ridiculed for this, I retreated into myself and became more observant and more silent. A small, very dim yet new light appeared to me--reflection, silent thoughts at night, and when alone; questionings with no least effort at answers. My new world as yet was not much more than a mile square, as in my native town; within that mile I knew every natural object and all the people. Everybody called me by my first name, prefixing, usually, "little curly" or "snub-nose," and my companions gave me nicknames according to their likes or dislikes. I much affected the company of boys older than myself, especially my cousins, whom I naturally looked up to and very much admired. They would have none of me, called me "nuisance" and "tag-tail." This last epithet wounded me sorely and made me slink away like a whipped cur. Added to my mile-square world, I had now also the germs of memory. Faintly and at long intervals I remembered my life in Bellingham; but it seemed another planet, far off, indistinct, and I had as yet no desire to return to it. LOVE AND LUXURY