In her childhood Mary attended a day-school in Fetter Lane, where she received all the scholastic education she ever had. Her time was chiefly spent in the solitude of her own thoughts. A lonely childhood, however sad, is not infrequently beneficial in its results, in stimulating thought and bringing out the distinctive characteristics of a child. But to a child like Mary Lamb the very loneliness of her life would only tend to make more pronounced the liability to mental trouble. And although a taste for reading is one of the best that can be acquired, it would in the case of Mary Lamb have been all the better to have been carefully guarded and directed. It, however, afforded her no small delight to have the privilege of access to the library of her father's employer, "a spacious closet of good old English reading, where without much selection or prohibition she browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage." A new element entered into the life of Mary when a little more than ten years of age. In the month of February, 1775, her brother Charles was born to feed the hunger of her loving heart. From the first he was her charge. She nursed the weakly child with tender care, fostered his loving disposition, and as she could, trained his infant mind. Their childhood thus passed hand in hand, in accord with their future lives. When Charles was about seven years old he entered Christ's Hospital. It was here he first formed the friendship of Coleridge, which proved so fruitful in after years. As time passed over the household the circumstances of the Lambs, never affluent, became more straitened. The elder son, John, seems to have cared chiefly for himself, and not to have been very reliable for contribution to the family support. In his fifteenth year Charles left the Blue Coat School to bear his share (which proved to be a large one) of the burden of the family life. He obtained a clerkship in the South Sea House, which in two years was exchanged for a better one in the East India House, Mary at the same time also adding to the slender means by dressmaking.