82 RISEN BY PERSE VERANCB. 



the farthing that I had to give now and then for ink, pen, oi 

 paper. That farthing was, alas ! a great sum to me. I was 

 as tall as I am now ; I had great health and great exercise. 

 The whole of the money not expended for us at market was 

 twopence a week for each man, I remember, and well I may, ■ 

 that upon one occasion I, after all absolutely necessary 

 expenses, had, on a Friday, made shift to have a halfpenny 

 in reserve, which I had destined for the purchase of a red 

 herring in the morning ; but when I pulled off my clothes at 

 night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life, 

 I found that I had lost my halfpenny. I buried my head 

 under the miserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child. 

 And again I say, if I, under circumstances like these, could 

 encounter and overcome this task, is there, can there be, in the 

 whole world a youth to find an excuse for the non-perform- 

 ance ? What youth who shall read this will not be ashamed to 

 say that he is not able to find time and opportunity for this 

 most essential of all the branches of book-learning ! ' 



His natural disposition, prompt and active, made him fall 

 easily into the better parts of military habits. The original 

 maxim of the man who for forty years daily did so much, and 

 who, having put his hand to the plough, never once looked 

 back, was Toiijours pret, ' always ready ; ' and it ought to be 

 the family motto of the Cobbetts. He says of himself: — 



• For my part, I can truly say that I owe more of my great 

 labours to my strict adherence to the precepts that I have 

 here given you than to all the natural abilities with which I 

 have been endowed ; for these, whatever may have been their 

 amount, would have been of comparatively little use, even 

 aided by great sobriety and abstinence, if I had not in early 

 life contracted the blessed habit of husbanding well my time. 



