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Rh book. It was a very great advantage that the whole school read every year the finest gems of thought and expression in the language. The genius of a great author will more than compensate for his difficulties. From my eighth to my tenth year I spent several terms in the city schools of Providence, Rhode Island. There I found the 'martinet' system prevailing. I wanted to come at the substance of the study, and I grudged the time wasted over the mechanism of it. There was no discussion whatever of the real subject. The mechanical memory was almost the only faculty required or much cultivated. After my thirteenth year, I attended various New England academies, say one term each at given different academies. In these schools I became interested in natural philosophy and in Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' and at fifteen I began the Greek grammar and became fond of astronomy. At seventeen I entered Phillips academy, Andover, Massachusetts, of which Doctor Samuel H. Taylor was principal. I had never before met a disciplinary force that swept me off my feet and overcame my capricious will. My intellectual work had been a matter of mere inclination. In my short stay at Andover, I gained more than at any other school. I had taught school for two winter sessions, and I used my winter evenings in study. At the age of sixteen I mastered geometry and trigonometry. The next winter I devoted entirely to Locke's 'Essay on the Human Understanding,' having heard that Franklin read it at my age. At first it was incomparably dull; but I soon became interested in Locke's refutation of innate ideas. When, three years later, I read 'Cousin's Criticism of Locke,' I took fire in every part of my soul, from the intense interest aroused in me at seeing Locke's positions overthrown by brilliant and overwhelming arguments based on keen psychological distinctions. I had reviewed all my work while at home working on the farm, and in the fall of 1854 I entered Yale college. Here, because I had already been thoroughly over the ground, I fell into lax habits of study in mathematics; but I became deeply interested in natural science. I wished to know nature. This thought overmastered me finally, and about the middle of my junior year I withdrew from the college, full of dissatisfaction with its course of study, and impatient for three then 'moderns' — modern science, modern literature, and modern history. I had disparaged the study of Latin and Greek as dead languages ; but later I discovered that Latin and Greek was my chief instrument in the acquiring of new ideas."