I was almost grateful to feel that no one could give me a good character by any stretch of imagination, so that at any rate I was safe from this fastidious professional gentleman. Then came another:
“News-boy wanted. Must have good voice. Apply Clerk, Great Central Railway Station.”
Even this did not tempt me. It might be a noble sphere of life to strive to make my voice heard above a dozen shrieking engines all day long, but I didn’t quite fancy the idea.
In fact, as I read on and on, I became more and more convinced that my splendid talents would be simply wasted in London. Nothing my uncle had marked tempted me. A “muffin boy’s” work might be pleasant for a week, till the noise of the bell had lost its novelty; a “boy to learn the art of making button-holes in braces” might perhaps be a promising opening; and a printer’s boy might be all very well, but they none of them accorded with my own ideas, still less with my opinion of my own value.
I was getting rather hopeless, and wondering what on earth I should say to my uncle, when the brilliant idea occurred to me of looking at some of the other advertisements which my uncle hadn’t marked. Some of these were most tempting.
“A junior partner wanted in an old-established firm whose profits are £10,000 a year. Must bring £15,000 capital into the concern.”
There! If I only had £15,000, my fortune would be made at once!
“Wanted a companion for a nobleman’s son about to travel abroad.”
There again, why shouldn’t I try for that? What could a nobleman’s son require more in a companion than was to be found in me?
And so I travelled on, beginning at the top of the ladder and sliding gently down, gradually losing not only the hope of finding a situation to suit me, but also relinquishing my previous strong faith in my own wonderful merits. I was ready to give it up as a bad job, and go and tell my uncle I must decline all his kind suggestions, when, in an obscure corner of one paper, my eye caught the following: