“The boy named ——, whom I took as an apprentice a few weeks ago, was in the office yesterday (Sunday), with another boy, and amused himself by breaking the windows in an unoccupied house back of the office by throwing type at them. I sent for the owner of the building, and brought the boy before him; and he concluded to let the young scamp off on his paying damages.”
“Oct. 31. I am still overwhelmed with trouble in my business. The first sheet of the November number of the ‘Library’ is not yet printed.... Heard this morning that my clerk is sick with a fever,—another great inconvenience.... H—— is almost worn down with anxiety on my behalf. Everything seems to go wrong, and each succeeding week becomes worse than the last.”
This year was not an easy one for business men generally, and Walter Aimwell was not alone in suffering pecuniary difficulties. But all his troubles did not arise from the general condition of monetary affairs. No doubt a part must be attributed to a degree of dishonor in the character of some with whom he had dealings which a man of his purity and principle would not be likely to suspect.
“Saturday, Nov. 25. Another week of care and anxiety is over, and I find myself anxiously counting the remaining ones before I can hope for a decided relief!”
Very slowly, very conditionally, and with the continual deferring of hope which so unnerves the will and wearies the heart, came relief. He was not a man given to complaining, but here he makes a simple statement of his general experience for the year 1848:—
“The past year has opened a new chapter in my experience. I have felt more the realities of life than in any former year; and for the first time I have begun to learn what is meant by care and anxiety. The year 1848 has been a most trying one for business men, and perhaps I have had but my share of difficulty; but the trouble I have had in managing my business, and the unprecedented labor I have had to perform, have proved a burden from which I would gladly escape. The result has been that I have sold one-half the ‘Rambler’ at considerably less than its estimated value, for the purpose of securing assistance and relieving me of a part of my labor.”
On the first of January, 1849, he enters the marriage relation with Miss M. A. C. Bodge, of whose amiable qualities it is not becoming for me in this place to speak.
In the latter part of the year 1848, he received some assistance both in pecuniary matters, and in the labor of conducting the business, but only so much as took off the actually unsupportable part of the burden; still remained as much to bear and to do as he seemed able to endure or to accomplish. Day after day, week after week, month after month, the short, significant, daily entries make the reader’s heart ache for the genuine suffering of an earnest and honest man, thrown, by the requirements of business intercourse, into relations so formal and artificial in their nature as to be of themselves somewhat distasteful to his eager, loving spirit, and also into the unmanageable perplexities that come when, for any reason, the complicated system of formal relations that is called the business world, is in any degree deranged. To all this, add contact with honest misfortune, blundering carelessness, selfishness in the degree of unblushing dishonor, and wilful malice, and we can conjecture a little of the much that this pitying, earnest, generous, honorable man was called to endure.