ified to discharge, it was first to be considered how I was to be
provided with employment, and where I was to find an employer or
purchaser for my commodities. In the mean time I had no alternative.
The little money with which I had escaped from the blood-hunters was
almost expended.

After the minutest consideration I was able to bestow upon this
question. I determined that literature should be the field of my first
experiment. I had read of money being acquired in this way, and of
prices given by the speculators in this sort of ware to its proper
manufacturers. My qualifications I esteemed at a slender valuation. I
was not without a conviction that experience and practice must pave the
way to excellent production. But, though of these I was utterly
destitute, my propensities had always led me in this direction; and my
early thirst of knowledge had conducted me to a more intimate
acquaintance with books, than could perhaps have been expected under my
circumstances. If my literary pretensions were slight, the demand I
intended to make upon them was not great. All I asked was a subsistence;
and I was persuaded few persons could subsist upon slenderer means than
myself. I also considered this as a temporary expedient, and hoped that
accident or time might hereafter place me in a less precarious
situation. The reasons that principally determined my choice were, that
this employment called upon me for the least preparation, and could, as
I thought, be exercised with least observation.

There was a solitary woman, of middle age, who tenanted a chamber in
this house, upon the same floor with my own. I had no sooner determined
upon the destination of my industry than I cast my eye upon her as the
possible instrument for disposing of my productions. Excluded as I was
from all intercourse with my species in general, I found pleasure in the
occasional exchange of a few words with this inoffensive and
good-humoured creature, who was already of an age to preclude scandal.
She lived upon a very small annuity, allowed her by a distant relation,
a woman of quality, who, possessed of thousands herself, had no other
anxiety with respect to this person than that she should not contaminate
her alliance by the exertion of honest industry. This humble creature
was of a uniformly cheerful and active disposition, unacquainted alike
with the cares of wealth and the pressure of misfortune. Though her
pretensions were small, and her informatio