consideration, have done better than I had? With my peculiar
temperament and ideas, could I have pursued with advantage the
profession to which my respectable parents had endeavoured to bring
me up? It appeared to me that I could not, and that the hand of
necessity had guided me from my earliest years, until the present
night, in which I found myself seated in the dingle, staring on the
brands of the fire. But ceasing to think of the past which, as
irrecoverably gone, it was useless to regret, even were there cause
to regret it, what should I do in future? Should I write another
book like the Life of Joseph Sell; take it to London, and offer it
to a publisher? But when I reflected on the grisly sufferings
which I had undergone whilst engaged in writing the Life of Sell, I
shrank from the idea of a similar attempt; moreover, I doubted
whether I possessed the power to write a similar work--whether the
materials for the life of another Sell lurked within the recesses
of my brain? Had I not better become in reality what I had
hitherto been merely playing at--a tinker or a gypsy? But I soon
saw that I was not fitted to become either in reality. It was much
more agreeable to play the gypsy or the tinker than to become
either in reality. I had seen enough of gypsying and tinkering to
be convinced of that. All of a sudden the idea of tilling the soil
came into my head; tilling the soil was a healthful and noble
pursuit! but my idea of tilling the soil had no connection with
Britain; for I could only expect to till the soil in Britain as a
serf. I thought of tilling it in America, in which it was said
there was plenty of wild, unclaimed land, of which any one, who
chose to clear it of its trees, might take possession. I figured
myself in America, in an immense forest, clearing the land
destined, by my exertions, to become a fruitful and smiling plain.
Methought I heard the crash of the huge trees as they fell beneath