AS Printer and Philosopher 6i 



his vocabulary and his acquaintance with synonyms and 

 their different shades of meaning, and showed him how 

 he could twist phrases and sentences about. His times 

 for such exercises and for reading were at night after 

 work, before work began in the morning, and on Sun- 

 days. This severe training he imposed on himself; and 

 he was well advanced in it before he was sixteen years 

 of age. His memory and his imagination must both 

 have served him well; for he not only acquired a style 

 fit for narrative, exposition, or argument, but also learnt 

 to use the fable, parable, paraphrase, proverb, and dia- 

 logue. Thirdly, he began very early, while he was still 

 a young boy, to put all he had learnt to use in writing 

 for publication. When he was but nineteen years old 

 he wrote and published in London "A Dissertation on 

 Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain." In after 

 years he was not proud of this pamphlet; but it was 

 nevertheless a remarkable production for a youth of 

 nineteen. So soon as he was able to establish a news- 

 paper in Philadelphia he wrote for it with great spirit 

 and in a style at once accurate, concise, and attractive, 

 making immediate application of his reading and of the 

 conversation of intelligent acquaintances on both sides of 

 the ocean. His fourth principle of education was that 

 it should continue through life, and should make use of 

 the social instincts. To that end he thought that friends 

 and acquaintances might fitly band together in a sys- 



