think of her patience, her resignation, her unvarying sweetness, her
constant cheerfulness, my heart does homage to the virtue and goodness
of women.

One fine morning in September I went for the first time to work. The
office of Lawson Brothers was in Lincoln's Inn. The elder brother seldom
if ever appeared; the younger was always there. He gave me a very kindly
welcome, said he hoped I should not find my work tiresome, showed me
what I had to do, and, altogether, set me at my ease.

I sighed many times that morning to find of how little use was my
college education to me now and I sighed to think how all my dreams, all
my hopes and aspirations, had ended behind a clerk's desk, with eighty
pounds per annum in lieu of the fortune of which I had dreamed.

After a few days I became used to the novelty and did my best to
discharge my duties well.

Hundreds of young men in London lead lives similar to mine, with very
little variety; the only way in which I differed from them was that I
had my sister Clare to provide for. Alas! how soon I found out what a
small sum eighty pounds a year was! When we had paid the rent of our
three rooms, set aside a small sum for clothes and a small sum for food,
there was nothing left. Clare, whose appetite was dainty and delicate,
suffered greatly. I could not manage to provide even a bunch of grapes
for her; the trifling coppers I spent in flowers, that cheered her as
nothing else ever did, were sorely missed.

How I longed sometimes to take home a ripe peach, a bottle of wine, an
amusing book! But every penny was rigorously needed; there was not one