1828:] Calainities of a Clerk: 43 
blessed with inexperience in these matters, it may seem extraordinary 
that “the firm” should have shewn no feeling for my infirmity. But, 
in a counting-house, health is a commodity of which the fluctuations are 
very little regarded, seeing they have no reference to a commercial 
value, and that no amount of the article admits of being carried out into 
amoney column. At least this is the case wherever commerce is pur- 
sued with the gambling excitement and sharkish avidity that stimulated 
these my principals, whom I do not accuse of wanting common huma- 
nity, when they overlooked my wretched condition, but rather of for- 
getting that virtue in the hurry of business. 
In fact, with our house (as with others too numerous to mention), the 
sole aim, intention, worth, object, nay, excuse of life, was business. The 
most ordinary requirements of nature—eating, drinking, sleeping—were 
rather connived at than recognised. For myself, my daily escape to an 
eating-house dinner appeared to be sometimes regarded as partaking of 
the idleness of a holiday; and, when business was pressing (which it 
nearly always was) the hour’s absence, which custom accords to the 
demands of the stomach, though passed amid the din and clatter, and 
vulgar vociferations of a chop-house, was grudged to me as much as if it 
had been an act of embezzlement. On such occasions, I was sure to 
hear direct observations that had been made, during the non-occupation 
of my desk, to the other clerks—such as that “Jones was of a tardiness 
that could not be endured’”—or to receive myself the indirect reproof of 
remarks about the importance of business, and the value of time. The 
proverb says, “ Time was made for slaves”—but I, though abundantly 
a slave, could never find time for half the things expected of me.. 
If the ordinary necessities of repose and food were thus hardly con- 
ceded to us by our principals, it will be easily believed that the article 
of amusement was not to be found in their code. The bare mention of 
the word would have chained their tongues with wonder, and riveted 
their eyes in fearful ecstacy. For me, the ever-soliciting round of 
London diversions was as the forbidden circle of the magician: or if I 
might be said to approach the border of it, this was but in so far as a 
few widely-distant visits to the play went—at half-price, and once, by 
way of extremity, under the fearfully-snatched excitement of half a pint 
of Cape wine. On this last occasion, I well remember that my resort to 
the theatre was for the purpose of seeing Shakspeare’s Othello, or rather 
half of it—and that I had been persuaded into the indulgence by two 
or three young men, clerks like myself, who had a sort of notion of 
Shakspeare, and used to speak of him with the respectful appellation of 
“our immortle bard.” The next day came an extra head-ache, and all 
that unsettled feeling which the unhappy are sure to experience when 
they have mixed, by accident, in a scene of splendour remote from their 
own condition. 
After this manner I slaved through the lingering bustle and dreamy 
activity of my vocation, till I had reached the possession of seventy 
pounds per annum in salary, and nothing in thanks. The continuance 
of my engagement with Messrs. Gladwin, Brothers, Son, and Make- 
weig t, seemed as fixed as the desks in their office, or even as the mul- 
tiplication table in their souls. But though my spirit had been broken 
down into the smallest fractional part, that little remnant of man did at 
length rise against the constant application of the divisor. One evening, 
after my day had been one of more than usual plodding and pen-driving, 
G 2 
