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My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades.
I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father
intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service
of the Church. My early readiness in learning to read (which must
have been very early, as I do not remember when I could not read),
and the opinion of all his friends, that I should certainly make a
good scholar, encouraged him in this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin,
too, approved of it, and proposed to give me all his short-hand
volumes of sermons, I suppose as a stock to set up with, if I would
learn his character. I continued, however, at the grammar-school
not quite one year, though in that time I had risen gradually
from the middle of the class of that year to be the head of it,
and farther was removed into the next class above it, in order to go
with that into the third at the end of the year. But my father,
in the meantime, from a view of the expense of a college education,
which having so large a family he could not well afford, and the mean
living many so educated were afterwards able to obtain--reasons that
be gave to his friends in my hearing--altered his first intention,
took me from the grammar-school, and sent me to a school for writing
and arithmetic, kept by a then famous man, Mr.
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