"Come, cheer up, old man," said his cousin. "Why, if they do turn you out—which would be a burning shame—you can find something better."
"No," replied Josephus sadly, "I know my place. I am a junior clerk. They can be got to do my work at seven bob a week. Ah! in thousands."
"Well, but can't you do anything else?"
"Nothing else."
"In all these years, man, have you learned nothing at all?"
"Nothing at all."
Is there, thought Harry, gazing upon his luckless cousin, a condition more miserable than that of the cheap clerk? In early life he learns to spell, to read, to write, and perhaps keep books, but this only if he is ambitious. Here his education ends; he has no desire to learn anything more; he falls into whatever place he can get, and then he begins a life in which there is no hope of preferment and no endeavor after better things. There are, in every civilized country, thousands and thousands of these helpless and hopeless creatures: they mostly suffer in silence, being at the best ill-fed and ill-paid, but they sometimes utter a feeble moan, when one of them can be found with vitality enough about their pay and prospects. No one has yet told them the honest truth—that they are already paid as much as they deserve; that their miserable accomplishments cannot for a moment be compared with the skill of an artisan; that they are self-condemned because they make no effort. They have not even the energy to make a Union; they have not the sense of self-protection; they are content if they are not hungry, if they have tobacco to smoke and beer to drink.
"How long is it since you—did—whatever it was you did, that kept you down?" asked the younger man, at length.
"I did nothing. It was an accident. Unless," added Josephus with a smile—"unless it was the devil. But devils don't care to meddle with junior clerks."
"What was the accident, then?"