Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

a gloom for me attendant upon a City Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, the music, and the ballad-singers, the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all the glittering and endless succession of knacks and gew-gaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which make a week-day saunter through the less busy parts of the metropolis so delightful, are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle over; no busy faces to recreate the idle man who contemplates them ever passing by; the very face of business a charm by contrast to his temporary relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen but unhappy countenances —or half-happy at best-of emancipated 'prentices and little tradesfolk, with here and there a servant-maid that has got leave to go out, who, slaving all the week, with the habit has lost almost the capacity of enjoying a free hour, and livelily expressing the hollowness of a day's pleasuring. The very strollers in the fields on that day look anything but comfortable.

But besides Sundays, I had a day at Easter and a day at Christmas, with a full week in the Summer to go and air myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was a great indulgence; and the prospect of its récurrence, I believe, alone kept me up through the year, and made my durance tolerable. But when the

week came round, did the glittering phantom of the distance keep touch with me? or rather was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most of them? Where was the quiet? where the promised rest? Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, counting upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene before such another snatch would come. Still the prospect of its coming threw something of an illumination upon the darker side of my captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sustained my thraldom.

Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for business. This, during my latter years, had increased to such a degree that it was visible in all the lines of my countenance. My health and my good spirits flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, to which I should be found unequal. Besides my daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years of age, and no prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had grown to my desk, as it were; and the wood had entered into my soul.

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon the trouble legible in my countenance; but I did not know that it had raised

the suspicions of any of my employers, when, on the fifth of last month, a day ever to be remembered by me, L―, the junior partner in the firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirmity, and added that I was afraid I should eventually be obliged to resign his service. He spoke some words of course to hearten me, and there the matter rested. A whole week I remained labouring under the impression that I had acted imprudently in my disclosure; that I had foolishly given a handle against myself, and had been anticipating my own dismissal. A week passed in this manner, the most anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole life, when on the evening of the 12th of April, just as I was about quiting my desk to go home, (it might be about eight o'clock,) I received an awful summons to attend the presence of the whole assembled firm in the formidable back parlour. I thought now my time was surely come. I have done for myself. I am going to be told that they have no longer occasion for me. L, I could see, smiled at the terror I was in, which was a little relief to me,-when to my utter astonishment B, the eldest partner, began a formal harangue to me on the length of my services, my very meritorious conduct during the whole of the time, (the deuce, thought I, how did he find out that? I protest I never had the con⚫

Edence to think as much). He went on ta descant on the expediency of retiring at a certain time of life, (how my heart panted!) and asking me a few questions as to the amount of my own property, of which I have a little, ended with a proposal, to which his three partners nodded a grave assent, that I should accept from the house, which I had served so well, a pension for life to the amount of twothirds of my accustomed salary, a magnificen offer! I do not know what I answered be tween surprise and gratitude, but it was under stood that I accepted their proposal, and I was told that I was free from that hour to leave their service. I stammered out a bow, and a just ten minutes after eight I went home-forever. This noble benefit (gratitude forbids me to conceal their names) I owe to the kindness of the most munificent firm in the world,—the house of Boldero, Merryweather, Bosanquet. and Lacy.

Esto perpetua!

For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could only apprehend my felicity; I was too confused to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy, and knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity, for it is

[ocr errors]

a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I had more time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions: I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. And here let me caution persons grown old in active business, not lightly, nor without weighing their own resources, to forego their customary employment all at once, for there may be danger in it. I, feel it by myself, but I know that my resources are sufficient; and now that those first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home feeling of the blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung heavy upon me, I could walk it away; but I do not walk all day long, as I used to do in those transient holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the most of them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it away; but I do not read in that violent measure, with which, having no Time my own but candlelight Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight in by-gone Winters. I walk, read, or scribble, (as now,) just when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure; I let it come to me. I am like the man

-that's born, and has his years come te him,

In some green desert.

« AnteriorContinuar »