vacancy happening to occur, he was placed on "the staff" of the journal,
to aid in reviewing the books sent by their publishers. His income was
considerably augmented, but the work was harder, and required more of
his time.

From the first he was troubled to find how much more honesty demanded
than pay made possible. He had not learned this while merely
supplementing the labor of his friend, and taking his time. But now he
became aware that to make acquaintance with a book, and pass upon it a
justifiable judgment, required at least four times the attention he
could afford it and live. Many, however, he could knock off without
compunction, regarding them as too slight to deserve attention:
"indifferent honest," he was not so sensitive in justice as to reflect
that the poorest thing has a right to fair play; that, free to say
nothing, you must, if you speak, say the truth of the meanest. But
Walter had not yet sunk to believe there can be _necessity_ for doing
wrong. The world is divided, very unequally, into those that think a man
can not avoid, and those who believe he _must_ avoid doing wrong. Those
live in fear of death; these set death in one eye and right in the
other.

His first important review, Walter was compelled to print without having
finished it. The next he worked at hardest, and finished, but with less
deliberation. He grew more and more careless toward the books he counted
of little consequence, while he imagined himself growing more and more
capable of getting at the heart of a book by skimming its pages. If to
skim be ever a true faculty, it must come of long experience in the art
of reading, and is not possible to a beginner. To skim and judge, is to
wake from a doze and give the charge to a jury.