CHAPTER IV.
—He was one
Schooled in adversity.
When about four years of age, I was placed in Hutcheson's Charity School to get my education. The master, a good easy-osy sort of a person, saw that I was a genius and therefore took a special interest in my improvement in letters. Under his training I soon passed through the Gate of all learning—the Alphabet. In about six months I could read "lo a man and a gun," without spelling the words, which was accounted a great feat for a charity scholar, and for which I received "honourable mention" at the annual examination. I do not blush in the least in confessing that I was a charity scholar, seeing that I was the son of a poor but an honest and upright man. Besides, as I have attained to eminence through my own exertions, I am entitled to the greater credit and honour among my fellow-men.
Circumstances, however, rule everything. Perhaps my feelings on being a charity scholar would have been different had my father been able
