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Life and Letters, Ed. by M. Hansen-Taylor and H.E. Scudder
Life and Letters Ed by M HansenTaylor and HE Scudder Author:Bayard Taylor Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. FIRST VENTURES. 1842-1844. And with impassioned exultation, I reveled in the rage of Song ! VEnvoi (to " Rhymes of Travel " ). When Bay... more »ard Taylor's schooling drew near its close he began to cast about for a livelihood. There was some thought of his going to Philadelphia to study engraving, and he had evidently the possibility in his mind that he might be a painter. The work which he did in teaching at the Unionville Academy during the last part of his course there was ill paid and irksome to him. He disliked the rough manners of the place; he hated to whip the boys, and made the punishment as perfunctory as possible. Even a whipping may become a slight passport to fame, and one of Bayard's pupils enjoys now a tardy pride in having been whipped by a poet. Still, when he came back to his father's farm in the early summer of 1842, he made an effort to obtain a school, as the nearest means of support. He did not succeed, and after a few weeks of farm life he was apprenticed for a term of four years to Henry E. Evans, a printer in West Chester, and publisher of the " Village Record." For one who could not be made a farmer, had no liking for teaching, and showed a genuine fondness for books and writing, the mostdirect training was plainly to be had in the printing office. The " Village Record " was printed upon the old-fashioned hand-press, and it was the business of the apprentices to set the type, help make up the paper, pull the forms, and send the weekly issues off to the subscribers. The mechanical work was soon learned; the young apprentice was tall and strong, and he found leisure for the pursuits which had already become the business of his life. There was a circulating library in the town book-store, and every noon and evening Bayard resorted to it ...« less