It was two days before I ventured to call again at the office, where I had become a confidential clerk. My master passed me as I entered, but he neither spoke to nor noticed me. His coldness stung me. I felt my guiltiness burning over me. But my confusion was increased, when I learned that I was not only discharged, but that my place was to be supplied by Esau Taylor!
"Impossible!" I exclaimed.
"Deem it so," said my informant. "But you have cherished an adder that has stung you; and, with all your knowledge, you are ignorant of the world, and of the people that live, breathe, and act in it. Take my counsel, and regard every man as though he were your enemy, until you have proved him to be your friend."
There was something in his words that more than restored my wandering thoughts into their proper channel.
I found that I had performed an act of kindness towards a villain—for I had not only treated Esau Taylor hospitably, but knowing that in London a good coat is of as much importance as a good character, I had furnished him with wearing apparel from my own wardrobe. A few days afterwards I met him in the Strand, arrayed in my garments, and he passed me with a supercilious air, as though I were a being only fit to be despised. I walked on as though I saw him not, conscious that, if he had a soul within him, it must be burning with the coals of fire which I had heaped upon his head.
I soon found it was much easier to lose a good situation than to obtain an indifferent one, and that one act of folly might accomplish what a thousand of repentances could not retrieve.
In a few months I found myself in a state of destitution; and while the coat which I had given to Esau Taylor was still glossy upon his back, mine—my last remaining one—hung loose and forlorn upon my shoulders. Yet, although I then suffered from both cold and hunger, the words which my parents had made a portion of my character departed not from me, and the words "persevere!—persevere!" were ever in my heart, kindling, glowing as a flame, until, in solitary enthusiasm, I have exclaimed aloud, as I wandered (not having a roof to shelter me) upon the streets at midnight, "I will persevere."
I was glad to accept of employment as copying clerk to a law stationer, at a salary of seven shillings a-week. It was a small sum, and I have often thoughtlessly wasted many times the amount since; but it made me happy then. It snatched, or rather it bought from the gripe of death—it relieved me from the pains and the terrors of want. My situation was now sufficiently humble, but my spirit was not broken; neither had I forgotten Jessy Mortimer, nor did I despair of one day calling her mine.
During the days of humiliation which I am recording, I was struck with an incident, which, although trifling in itself, I shall here relate; for from it I drew a lesson which encouraged me, and made me resolve, if possible, to carry my maxim into more active practice. Frequently on a Saturday afternoon, when the labours of the week were over, instead of returning to my wretched garret (for which I paid a shilling a-week, and which contained no furniture save a shake-down bed and a broken chair), I was wont to go out in the country, and to seek the silence and solitude of the woods and the green lanes. On such occasions
"My lodging was on the cold ground,"