Proceeding with his pathetic story, he says: "I was about fifteen years of age when I built these castles in the air. A storm, however, was collecting, which unexpectedly burst upon me and swept them all away. On mentioning my plan to my guardian, he treated it with the utmost contempt, and told me he had been negotiating with his cousin, a shoemaker of some respectability, who had liberally consented to take me, without fee, as an apprentice. I was so shocked at this intelligence that I did not venture to remonstrate, but went in sullenness and silence to my new master, to whom I was bound till I should attain the age of twenty-one. At this period I had read nothing but a romance called 'Parismus,' a few loose magazines--the Bible, indeed, I was well acquainted with; these, with the 'Imitation of Thomas à Kempis,' which I used to read to my mother on her death-bed, constituted the whole of my literary acquisitions." The account which follows has few things to equal it in the records of struggling genius. It will serve to show how abject and apparently hopeless was his condition as a student at this time of his life, and will show also, what it may be hoped no youth who reads these pages will fail to learn, how marvellous is the power of energy and perseverance to triumph over apparently insuperable obstacles. "I possessed," Gifford writes, "at this time but one book in-the world; it was a treatise on algebra given to me by a young woman who had found it in a lodging-house. I considered it a treasure; but it was a treasure locked up, for it supposed the reader to be acquainted with simple equations, and I knew nothing of the matter." He then speaks of meeting with a book called Fenning's "Introduction" belonging to his master's son, who, by the way, was discovered afterward to have been all through this time a secret rival for the head-mastership. This "Introduction" gave Gifford just the information required to carry him forward into the study of algebra. But he was compelled to study it by stealth, lest it should be taken from him, and he goes on to say: "I sat up for the greater part of several nights successively and completely mastered it. I could now enter upon my own, and that carried me pretty far into the science. This was not done without difficulty. I had not a farthing on earth, nor a friend to give me one; pen, ink, and paper, therefore, were for the most part as completely out of my reach as a crown and sceptre. There was, indeed, a resource, but the utmost caution and secrecy were necessary in applying to it. I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as possible and wrought my problems on them with a blunted awl; for the rest my memory was tenacious, and I could multiply and divide by it to a great extent."