Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/195

 MILLARD FILLMORE 151 attending the carding machine. In 1819 he con ceived the design of becoming a lawyer. Fillmore, who had yet two years of his apprenticeship to serve, agreed with his employer to relinquish his wages for the last year s services, and promised to pay thirty dollars for his time. Making an arrangement with a retired country lawyer, by which he was to receive his board in payment for his services in the office, he began the study of law, a part of the time teaching school, and so strug gling on, overcoming almost insurmountable diffi culties, till at length, in the spring of 1823, he was, at the intercession of several leading members of the Buffalo bar, whose confidence he had won, ad mitted as an attorney by the court of common pleas of Erie County, although he had not completed the course of study usually required. The writer has recently seen the dilapidated one-story build ing in Buffalo where Mr. Fillmore closed his career as a school-master, and has also conversed with one of his pupils of four-score years ago. The wisdom of his youth and early manhood gave presage of all that was witnessed and admired in the maturity of his character. Nature laid on him, in the kindly phrase of Wordsworth, &quot;the strong hand of her purity,&quot; and even then he was remarked for that sweet courtesy of manner which accompanied him through life. Millard Fillmore began practice at Aurora, where his father then resided, and for-