Our young student retired to his garret, a small room in the roof of the cottage, heated by the summer sun resting on its roof almost to the heat of a furnace. One small window looking towards the east admitted the evening breeze.
In the remotest corner was a low and narrow pallet, by the side of which hung the indispensable articles of a man's apparel.
A small table, covered with ink spots, and a solitary chair stood in the centre of the little apartment. A few deal shelves contained the odd and worn volumes of the student's library. A Greek Testament, several lexicons, half a volume of Horace, lay scattered on the table. Virgil was the book he had brought with him from the pine-knot torch, and it was the old Grecian, Homer that he was so anxious to possess.
The uncarpeted floor was thickly strewn with sheets half written over, and torn manuscripts were scattered about. Wherever the floor was visible, the frequent ink spots indicated that it was not without mental agitation that these manuscripts had been produced.
It was not to repose from the labors of the day that the young man entered his little chamber: to bodily labor must now succeed mental toil.
He cast a wistful look towards his little pallet; he longed to rest his limbs, aching with the labor of the day; but no; his lamp was on the table, and, resolutely throwing off his coarse frock, he sat down to think and to write.
Wearied by a long day of labor, the student in vain tried to collect his thoughts, to calm his weakened nerves. He rose and walked his chamber with rapid steps, the drops of heat and anguish resting on his brow.
"Oh!" said he, "that I had been content to remain the clod, the toil-worn slave that I am!"
Little do they know, who have leisure and wealth, and all the appurtenances of literary ease—the lolling study-chair, the convenient apartment, the brilliant light—how much those suffer who indulge in aspirations beyond their lowly fortune.