Liberty

Ruskin, Self-Portrait, 1874

One evening, when I was yet in my nurse's arms, I wanted to touch the tea-urn, which was boiling merrily. It was an early taste for bronzes, I suppose; but I was resolute about it. My mother bade me keep my fingers back; I insisted on putting them forward. My nurse would have taken me away from the urn, but my mother said — "Let him touch it, Nurse."  So I touched it, — and that was my first lesson in the meaning of the word Liberty. It was the first piece of Liberty I got, and the last which for some time I asked for.

John Ruskin, from E.T. Cook's, The Life of John Ruskin