Read it through once

I shall not trouble the reader with a minute account of my early life, for it would be superfluous. I was born about the middle of the nineteenth century, in the state of Connecticut, and at the proper age I was sent to school, whipped, and promoted. I learned a great deal that I never made any use of, and forgot a great deal that I might once have made some use of. When I left school, as most young men do who leave it in the middle of the nineteenth century, I began to study a trade and the world at once; and I found that the world, though often anxious to help a man who is willing and able to help himself, sometimes sets obstacles in his way — many of them in the form of institutions and customs.