44 Calamities of a Clerk. [Juxy, 
a trifling error in a balance (the result of hurry and exhaustion), pro- 
duced remarks of “This will never do”—‘ D’ye call this doing busi- 
ness ?”——and the like short sentences, ending with a murmured hint 
about “ diligence, or dismissal.’ My injured spirit for once rose supe- 
rior. I addressed to my task-masters the language of indignation, and 
took up the hat of departure. tie 
« Treason,” it is said, “ never prospers.” Rebellion does sometimes. 
This one act of defiance did more for me than seven years of service and 
submission.—Two days afterwards, I was re-engaged by Messrs. Glad- 
win and Co., at an advance in salary of fifty pounds a year. 
This incident, however, was one bright spot—one solitary ray of sun- 
shine, falling on a dark sea of general calamity. The fault was in my 
trade more than in the people that I met with. The vein that I had 
selected in the mine of fortune was a bad one. 
Suffice it to say, that I went on, but did not get forward. ‘The same 
desolate drudgery, the same heart-sickening routine, the same tedious 
bustle, the same mechanical handicraft, as it were, of the mind, still 
wrought their former effects, and made me as stupid as a chimney- 
sweeper, and dull as a November fog ; or as that inert mass of animal, 
worshipped in the city under the inexplicable name of “ a lively turtle.” 
The dependant name and office of clerk were become doubly odious to 
me, from their very necessity ; for I had now no other resource. My 
father, much against my own good-will, had sold that of his business, 
and with the produce had purchased an annuity for the support of him- 
self and my mother ; for, with regard to me, he held provision to be 
unnecessary, thinking that a clerk grew into a merchant as naturally as 
a plant into a tree, or a child into aman! At all events, as he observed, 
I “ had not been idle ;” and a person that is not idle must be doing some- 
thing for himself. To the last, he never could see the mistake he had 
committed in making me “ the thing I am.” é 
Forty years have now passed, and left me in the same forlorn condition 
—at least the only change I have experienced has consisted in “ variety 
of misery ;” for I have acquired, I scarce know how, the painful super- 
fluity of a wife and five small children. This last circumstance has 
hammered the final rivet upon my chains, and I must die in them, as I 
have lived—with this utmost hope, that my name may then be utterly 
forgotten by the few that have ever heard of it, rather than that it should 
be recorded on my tomb that I died at a certain date, and lived many 
years in the confidential service of Messrs. Griper and Mullins—or other 
firm, as per future contingence. 
In conclusion, let those who would not scorn the advice of an expe- 
rienced wretch, take my assurance that they cannot doom a child (how- 
ever arithmetical) to a worse life than that of a clerk. Let not a father, 
who has a business to give his son, force him to seek one, for the sake of 
a prejudice about superior gentility. Let every tradesman, in directing 
the pursuits of his child, prefer trade to commerce—the counter to the 
counting-house. If this recommendation be followed, the condition of a 
“ large and interesting class of sufferers” will be amended by their diminu- 
tion: their utility will then be more fully recognized by those who profit 
by it, and their claims to a living recompence established. Nothing is 
more certain, than thatthe number of our devoted tribe requires thinning 
down ; and that to promote the subtraction of clerks will be to stop the 
multiplication of misery. _ Ds 
CTech Ae ae rience owe 
