four o'clock
He would come short in nothing , and at that tender age , when his relatives were prepared to forgive his failures with good-humoured tact , he was willing to sacrifice even his books to clerical success . He soon discovered that he had that order of mind which concentrates without effort upon what ever demands its powers , -- masters the detail of it with incredible swiftness . At first he was a general clerk , and attended to the loading and unloading of Mr. Cruger 's sloops ; after a time he was made bookkeeper ; it was not long before he was in charge of the counting-house . He got back to his books in time -- for business in the Islands finishes at four o'clock -- and when he had learned all the Latin , Greek , Hebrew , and mathematics Hugh Knox could teach him , he spent his leisure hours with Pope , Plutarch , Shakespeare , Milton , Plato , and the few other English poets and works of Greek philosophers which Knox possessed , as well as several abridged histories of England and Europe . These interested him more than aught else , purely literary as his proclivities were supposed to be , and he read and reread them , and longed for some huge work in twenty volumes which should reveal Europe to his searching vision . But this was when he was fourteen , and had almost forgotten what the life of a mere boy was like . Shortly after he entered Mr. Cruger 's store he wrote his famous letter to young Stevens .