His compensation as out-door clerk enabled him to employ a man to teach him at night, and, by continued study and attention to business, he was soon promoted.
After three years in his new home, Jerome was placed in a still higher position, where his salary amounted to fifteen hundred dollars a year.
The drinking, smoking, and other expensive habits, which the clerks usually indulged in, he carefully avoided.
Being fond of poetry, he turned his attention to literature.

Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," the writings of Dryden, Addison, Pope, Clarendon, and other authors of celebrity, he read with attention.

The knowledge which he thus picked up during his leisure hours gave him a great advantage over the other clerks, and caused his employers to respect him far more than any other in their establishment.

So eager was he to improve the time that he determined to see how much he could read during the unemployed time of night and morning, and his success was beyond his expectations..