But knowledge
isn't to be got with paying sixpence, let me tell you. If you're to know
figures, you must turn 'em over in your heads and keep your thoughts
fixed on 'em. There's nothing you can't turn into a sum, for there's
nothing but what's got number in it--even a fool. You may say to
yourselves, 'I'm one fool, and Jack's another; if my fool's head weighed
four pound, and Jack's three pound three ounces and three quarters, how
many pennyweights heavier would my head be than Jack's?' A man that had
got his heart in learning figures would make sums for himself and work
'em in his head. When he sat at his shoemaking, he'd count his stitches
by fives, and then put a price on his stitches, say half a farthing, and
then see how much money he could get in an hour; and then ask himself
how much money he'd get in a day at that rate; and then how much ten
workmen would get working three, or twenty, or a hundred years at that
rate--and all the while his needle would be going just as fast as if
he left his head empty for the devil to dance in. But the long and the
short of it is--I'll have nobody in my night-school that doesn't strive
to learn what he comes to learn, as hard as if he was striving to get
out of a dark hole into broad daylight.
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