would listen; and every fresh book that I read through, gave him visions of my future glory.
No one can tell how the poor fellow pinched himself to give me this scanty education, but hard necessity had taught me to think; I was compelled to make use of my judgment, young as I was; and, knowing that he had the sum of five hundred dollars in his possession, for my use, I tried to prevail on him to draw out a fifth part of it for the purpose of paying a better board, and getting me a better teacher. If any one could have seen this poor man as I saw him at that time, thin, bowed down by poverty and neglect, ragged and with scarcely a home, they would have wondered that his honesty could have held out as it did when he had what might be considered as so large a sum within his power. He not only did not touch a penny himself, but he would not take a cent of it from the principal. He distrusted his own judgment, and he distrusted mine, for I was such a mere child; yet his anxiety to give me an education was still uppermost, and he wavered for a long time about adopting the only means of accomplishing it.
He had been digging post holes, one day, for a gentleman, and when his task was finished, he began to speak of the books which he saw lying about—it was a printing office—and, as was most natural to him, he spoke of me. He told the printer of his anxieties and his desire that I should have a good education, and finally he spoke of my proposal respecting the money. The printer told Patrick, that it was very good advice, and he had better take it; for if his object was to educate me, there was no other way but this of effecting it, unless he sent me to a charity school. The blood mounted in the poor fellow's cheeks at this suggestion, and he told me that he had great difficulty in
