Not that I was consciously, much less selfishly, ambitious. I had no idea
as yet to be anything but a tailor to the end; to make clothes--perhaps in
a less infernal atmosphere--but still to make clothes and live thereby. I
did not suspect that I possessed powers above the mass. My intense longing
after knowledge had been to me like a girl's first love--a thing to be
concealed from every eye--to be looked at askance even by myself, delicious
as it was, with holy shame and trembling. And thus it was not cowardice
merely, but natural modesty, which put me on a hundred plans of concealing
my studies from my mother, and even from my sister.
I slept in a little lean-to garret at the back of the house, some ten feet
long by six wide. I could just stand upright against the inner wall, while
the roof on the other side ran down to the floor. There was no fireplace in
it, or any means of ventilation. No wonder I coughed all night accordingly,
and woke about two every morning with choking throat and aching head. My
mother often said that the room was "too small for a Christian to sleep in,
but where could she get a better?"
Such was my only study.
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