136 MY LIFE 



including the mains and street lamps, so that everything should 

 be handed over in good working order; and though I had 

 generally to mind the shop while the master was away, I heard 

 every detail discussed in the evening, and sometimes went out 

 with them after closing hours, to examine some street lamp 

 or house connection that showed indication of a leak or 

 water stoppage. Before quitting this episode in my early life, 

 I may just note that in after years we became almost neigh- 

 bours, first in North- West London, and afterwards at Godal- 

 ming, and kept up a neighbourly friendship for many 

 years. 



A son, William Matthews, jun., was brought up to watch- 

 making, with the prospect of succeeding his father as head 

 of the London firm; but the business was distasteful to him, 

 and when he came of age he entered the office of a building 

 surveyor. But the strain of London life, and an insatiable 

 love of work when work was to be had, undermined his health 

 and he died in middle age. Mr. Matthews himself was also 

 an example of an intelligent man with considerable ability 

 entirely lost in the narrow round of a small old-fashioned city 

 business, which absorbed all his energies, and, combined with 

 the habit of excessive snuff-taking, affected both his mental 

 faculties and his physical health. I am, therefore, thankful 

 that circumstances allowed me to continue in the more varied, 

 more interesting, and more healthful occupation of a land- 

 surveyor. 



This may be considered the first of several turning-points 

 of my life, at which, by circumstances beyond my own con- 

 trol, I have been insensibly directed into the course best 

 adapted to develop my special mental and physical activities. 

 It was the death at this particular period of the senior partner 

 in the city watchmaking firm, and his having offered to Mr. 

 Matthews the opportunity of being his successor on exceed- 

 ingly advantageous terms, that prevented me from becoming 

 a mechanical tradesman in a country town, by which my life 

 would almost certainly have been shortened and my mental 

 development stunted by the monotony of my occupation. If 

 I had completed the year with Mr. Matthews, I should have 



