I asked my aunt if I might use that to study in, and she said that “it wasn’t any fret of hers.” I could. So I placed a bedroom chair, and secured a small, second-hand writing-desk, and placed them in the room. I used the white mantel-shelf for my books. I placed them lovingly on end, and according to color, and they seemed magnificent to me--my first library! I would stand before them, in proud contemplation, and whisper to myself, “My own books!” I have read that in the midst of the rough ocean there are quiet, calm places where a storm-driven ship may ride at peaceful anchor. That dingy room, with its pathetic row of dingy, obsolete books, its bedroom chair and small desk, with the accumulated dust on the bare floor, was such a place for me. My first duty after supper was to insert a comment in my diary. Many times I would leave the table with aunt and uncle in violent controversy, with one or another of them intoxicated and helpless, and the line would be, in significant red ink, “Dark To-day!” It was “Dark To-day,” and “Dark To-day” for weeks and months. There were few occasions to ever write, “Had a good day, to-day” which, being interpreted, always meant, “Aunt and uncle are not drinking now and are living together without rows!” For I always condensed my diary record, for I thought, “It might be read--some day. Who knows? You’d better not be too definite!” I ceased to go out at night now, for I was determined “to make something of myself,” now that I had read “Poor Boys who became Famous.” What they had done, I might do. They had gone through hardships. I could go through mine, if only I was not so weak in body. One night my aunt severely arraigned me for something I had not said. She heaped her significant phrases on my head, taunted me, and aroused in me the murderer’s passion. I immediately ran to my “study,” closed the door, and received consolation from “Poor Boys who became Famous” by finding that they had attained fame through patience. I resolved to bear with fortitude the things that were set in my way. It was a very elaborate, systematic, and commendable system of self-improvement that I laid out for myself, chiefly at the suggestion of a writer in “Success Magazine,” which I was reading with avidity. “A few minutes a day, on a street-car, at a spare moment, indulged in some good book, have been sufficient to broadly train many men who otherwise would _NEVER_ have reached the pinnacle of fame,” it read, and, acting on that hint, I resolved to get at least a few minutes a day with my own great books. I would not be narrow, but would read in them all every evening! I would read law, theology, history, biography, and study grammar and arithmetic!