ABSTRACT
[…] I thought sometimes that I surely had a taste peculiarly by myself and that nobody else thought or saw things as I did. Still, as my highest ambition at that time was nothing else but the trifle of pleasing one’s self, these fancies could dishearten me very little while that gratification was always at hand. But a circumstance occurred which nearly stopped me from writing even for my own amusement. Borrowing a school book of a companion having some entertaining things in it both in prose and verse, with an introduction by the compiler, who doubtless like myself knew little about either (for such like affect to give advice to others while they want it themselves), in this introduction was rules both for writing as well as reading Compositions in prose and verse; where stumbling on a remark that a person who knew nothing of grammar was not capable of writing a letter nor even a bill of parcels, I was quite in the suds, seeing that I had gone on thus far without learning the first rudiments of doing it properly. For I had hardly said the name of grammar while at school.
