mself. What he considered as
the chief end of my residence in that city, I had postponed for every
other, and would (had I dared) have neglected altogether. Dubourg, a
favoured and benefited correspondent of our mercantile house, was too
much of a shrewd politician to make such reports to the head of the firm
concerning his only child, as would excite the displeasure of both; and
he might also, as you will presently hear, have views of selfish
advantage in suffering me to neglect the purposes for which I was placed
under his charge. My conduct was regulated by the bounds of decency and
good order, and thus far he had no evil report to make, supposing him so
disposed; but, perhaps, the crafty Frenchman would have been equally
complaisant, had I been in the habit of indulging worse feelings than
those of indolence and aversion to mercantile business. As it was, while
I gave a decent portion of my time to the commercial studies he
recommended, he was by no means envious of the hours which I dedicated to
other and more classical attainments, nor did he ever find fault with me
for dwelling upon Corneille and Boileau, in preference to Postlethwayte
(supposing his folio to have then existed, and Monsieur Dubourg able to
have pronounced his name), or Savary, or any other writer on commercial
economy. He had picked up somewhere a convenient expression, with which
he rounded off every letter to his correspondent,--"I was all," he said,
"that a father could wish."

My father never quarrelled with a phrase, however frequently repeated,
provided it seemed to him distinct and expressive; and Addison himself
could not have found expressions so satisfactory to him as, "Yours
received, and duly honoured the bills enclosed, as per margin."

Knowing, therefore, very well what he desired me to, be, Mr. Osbaldistone
made no doubt, from the frequent repetition of Dubourg's favourite
phrase, that I was the very thing he wished to see me; when, in an evil
hour, he received my letter, containing my eloquent and detailed apology
for declining a place in the firm, and a desk and stool in the corner of
the dark counting-house in Crane Alley, surmounting in height those of
Owen, and the other clerks, and only inferior to the tripod of my father
himself. All was wrong from that moment. Dubourg's reports became as
suspicious as if his bills had been noted for dishonour. I was summoned
home in all haste, and received in the manner I have already commu