Excerpt from Risen by Perseverance: Or Lives of Self-Made Men

Ness and from this and other considerations, he determined to adopt that way of living for the future. Having taken this resolution, he proposed to his brother, if he would give him weekly only half what his board had hitherto cost, to board himself, an offer which was immediately accepted. He presently found that by adhering to his new system of diet he could still save half what his brother allowed him. 'this, ' says he, 'was an additional fund for buying of books; but I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest gomg from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone, and despatching presently my light repast (which was often no more than a biscuit or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastrycook's, and a glass of water), had the rest of the time till their return for study; in which I made the greater progress, from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which generally attend temperance in eating and drinking.' It was about this time that, by means of Cocker's Arithmetic, he made himself master of that science, which he had twice attempted in vain to learn while at school; and that he also obtained some acquaintance with the elements of geometry, by the perusal of a treatise on Navigation. He mentions, likewise, among the works which he now read, Locke on l/ze Human and the port-royal Art of Tfiz'nl'zng; together with two little sketches on the arts of Logic and Rhetoric, which he found at the end of an English grammar, arid which initiated him in the Socratic mode of disputation, or that way of arguing by which an antagonist, by being questioned, is imperceptibly drawn into admissions which are afterwards dexterously turned against him. Of this method of reasoning he became, he tells us, excessively fond, finding.

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