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Life of Thomas Cooper (Victorian Library)
Life of Thomas Cooper - Victorian Library Author:Thomas Cooper 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: RESOLVE TO BE A SCHOTAR. 53 CHAPTER VI. STUDENT-LIFE : ITS ENJOYMENTS : 1824—1828. How rich I was, with ten shillings per week, to buy food and clothes... more »—now all this intellectual food was glutting me on every side ! And how resolute I was on becoming solitary, and also on becoming a scholar! What though I could not get to Cambridge, like Kirke White, could I not study as hard as he studied, and learn as fast ? Friends and acquaintances had left the little old town, one after another ; but I would not leave it. I would learn enough in that corner to enable myself to enter on mature life with success ; and I would have no friend in addition to my new friend John Hough, with whom I had promised to spend a couple of hours or more, every Saturday night, in intellectual converse. Yet I would have strengthened my friendship with Thomas Miller, if he would have become a student. We had only seen each other occasionally (although we had ever retained the fond friendship of childhood), for several years. Miller's mother had been compelled to apprentice her boy to a trade; and the person54 Miller's Youthful Frolicks. to whom Tom was apprenticed wa.'i so vain and ignorant, and tyrannised to such a degree over the strong-willed boy, that Tom one day put him in fear of his life, by throwing an iron instrument at him. So the boy was given up to his mother, who had recently re-married; and her husband taught Tom the trade of a basket-maker. Of course, the lad soon had his own way; and, when working hours were over, passed his time as he pleased. He was strong, handsome, and proud; and was soon a favourite with all the maidens of his own rank in the town. He joined wild company that took to what some people consider to be only the playful tricks of youth; but would sober down a litt...« less