t fifty."

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the
hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you
will find me still a young fellow. For _that_ is the only true Time,
which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to
himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is
other people's time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or
short, is at least multiplied for me three-fold. My ten next years, if
I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair
rule-of-three sum.

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the commencement of my
freedom, and of which all traces are not yet gone, one was, that a
vast tract of time had intervened since I quitted the Counting House.
I could not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The partners,
and the clerks, with whom I had for so many years, and for so many
hours in each day of the year, been closely associated--being suddenly
removed from them--they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage,
which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert
Howard, speaking of a friend's death:

--'Twas but just now he went away;
I have not since had time to shed a tear;
And yet the distance does the same appear
As if he had been a thousand years from me.
Time takes no measure in Eternity.

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go among them
once or twice since; to visit my old desk-fellows--my co-brethren of
the quill--that I had left below in the state militant. Not all the
kindness with which they received me could quite restore to me that
pleasant familiarity, which I had heretofore enjoyed among them.
We cracked some of our old jokes, but methought they went off but
faintly. My old desk; the peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated
to another. I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. D----l
take me, if I did not feel some remorse--beast, if I had not,--at
quitting my old compeers, the faithful partners of my toils for six
and thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and conundrums
the ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so rugged then
after all? or was I a coward simply? Well, it is too late to repent;
and I also know, that these suggestions are a common fallacy of the
mind on such occasions. But my heart smote me. I had violently broken
the bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous.