s killed in battle just
as I was going up to the University, and left with very limited means, I
was offered a situation as clerk in the counting-house of a distant
relative, Mr Janrin. I had no disinclination to mercantile pursuits.
I looked on them, if carried out in a proper spirit, as worthy of a man
of intellect, and I therefore gladly accepted the offer. As my mother
lived in the country, my kind cousin invited me to come and reside with
him, an advantage I highly appreciated. Everything was conducted in his
house with clock-work regularity. If the weather was rainy, his coach
drew up to the door at the exact hour; if the weather was fine, the
servant stood ready with his master's spencer, and hat, and gloves, and
gold-headed cane, without which Mr Janrin never went abroad. Not that
he required it to support his steps, but it was the mark of a gentleman.
It had superseded the sword which he had worn in his youth. I soon got
to like these regular ways, and found them far pleasanter than the
irregularity of some houses where I had visited. I always accompanied
Mr Janrin when he walked, and derived great benefit from his
conversation, and though he offered me a seat in the coach in bad
weather, I saw that he was better pleased when I went on foot. "Young
men require exercise, and should not pamper themselves," he observed;
"but, James, I say, put a dry pair of shoes in your pocket--therein is
wisdom; and don't sit in your wet ones all day."

Thus it will be seen that I was treated by my worthy principal from the
first as a relative, and a true friend he was to me. But I was
introduced into the mysteries of mercantile affairs by Mr Gregory
Thursby, the head clerk. He lived over the counting-house, and on my
first appearance in it, before any of the other clerks had arrived, he
was there to receive me. He took me round to the different desks, and
explained the business transacted at each of them. "And there, Mr
James, look there," he said, pointing to a line of ponderous folios on a
shelf within easy distance of where he himself sat: "see, we have
Swift's works, a handsome edition too, eh!" and he chuckled as he spoke.

"Why, I fancied that they were ledgers," said I. "Ha! ha! ha! so they
are, and yet Swift's works, for all that, those of my worthy
predecessor, Jeremiah Swift, every line in them written by his own hand,
in his best style; so I call them Swift's works. You are not the first
person by a gr