Samuel Smiles：Self-Help, Excerpt 104

Literary life affords abundant illustrations of the same power of perseverance; and perhaps no career is more instructive, viewed in this light, than that of Sir Walter Scott. His admirable working qualities were trained in a lawyer’s office, where he pursued for many years a sort of drudgery scarcely above that of a copying clerk. His daily dull routine made his evenings, which were his own, all the more sweet; and he generally devoted them to reading and study. He himself attributed to his prosaic office discipline that habit of steady, sober diligence, in which mere literary men are so often found wanting. As a copying clerk he was allowed 3_d._ for every page containing a certain number of words; and he sometimes, by extra work, was able to copy as many as 120 pages in twenty-four hours, thus earning some 30_s._; out of which he would occasionally purchase an odd volume, otherwise beyond his means.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/935
Locator：Excerpt 104 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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