1828.] Vea ABQ 
CALAMITIES OF A CLERK; 
COMMUNICATED BY HIMSELF. 
“ By the world, I recount no fable!’—SHaKsPEARE. 
Unaccustomep as I am to public writing, and to any other arts of 
composition than those by which the phraseology of a day-book or a 
ledger is got up, I still cannot refrain from trying my pen at a piece of 
description which ought long ago to have been furnished by some of my 
equally-distressed and more gifted fellow-sufferers, the extensive class of 
persons distinguished by the name (itself, alas, most undistinguished !) 
of clerks. It is my object to recount, in my own individual, but far from 
peculiar case, some of the hardships and annoyances to which we 
prisoners of the counting-house are constantly exposed. I would ex- 
hibit to the public a bill of lading, as it were, of our heavy grievances, 
and an invoice of the amount of our complaint—such an invoice too, as 
shall not be liable to discount from being overcharged. I am encouraged in 
this task, by the hope that “ principals” may be urged to soften, in some 
degree, the rigours of employment ; though I am duly sensible that this 
hope may be fated to prove as vain as that which I once entertained, for 
six years together, of a trifling advance of salary. 
By way of being sufficiently methodical, I will go so far back as to 
state that I was born in London, of respectable parents, and a feeble 
constitution. My education, received at a well-frequented, though cheap 
academy, was rather limited in quantity, and not so well directed as it 
might have been. My father, a substantial small tradesman in the 
grocery line, and a very plain sort of man in most matters, had the mis- 
taken, but not uncommon notion, that his children should have “a 
finished education.” Mine was very soon finished, in one sense, for I was 
taken away from school at thirteen, crammed, as I was, with a chaotic 
mass of Latin accidence and syntax (which my memory and inclination 
speedily got rid of), and tolerably conversant with cyphering up to the 
rule of three inverse, besides being possessed of a smattering of bad 
French. Beyond this amount, I knew nothing: in truth, the Latin and 
French, as is usual, had absorbed by far the greater portion of the time. 
But these, if they were little understood at home, were very much 
admired ; and my father, in particular, thought me as refined as his own 
best lump sugar. The paleness of my face, and that proneness to a sitting 
posture, that I shewed in common with other boys of weak health, had 
often occasioned him jocularly to say, “ that I was cut out for a clerk ;” 
and he now seriously proceeded, but no doubt with the best intentions, to 
make me a partaker in that deplorable destiny. 
My father, among other things which he had no idea of, had none of 
“boys being idle ;’ and I was therefore hardly permitted to taste the 
sweets of that liberty, which consisted in what was called the run of the 
shop. Were I was fated to make, not a figure, but figures, in the capacity 
of junior clerk. The nature and limits of my oftice were no further 
defined than by the vague understanding that I was “to make myself 
useful.” The first week convinced me abundantly that those were not 
wanting who would make me so, whether I did it myself, or not. It will, 
