less condition
in life. I opened my little purse upon the table, and spread out its
contents before me. There were seven pounds and a few shillings. A
portion of my salary was still due to me, but now I would have felt it
a degradation to claim it, so odious had the career become in my eyes.

I began to think over the various things for which my capacity might fit
me. They seemed a legion when I stood in no need of them, and yet none
now rose to my mind without some almost impassable barrier. I knew no
art nor handicraft. My habits rendered me unequal to daily labor with
my hands. I knew many things en amateur, but not as an artist. I could
ride, draw, fence, and had some skill in music; but in not one of these
could I compete with the humblest of those who taught them. Foreign
languages, too, I could speak, read, and write well; but of any method
to communicate their knowledge I had not the vaguest conception. After
all, these seemed my best acquirements, and I determined to try and
teach them.

With this resolve I went out and spent two pounds of my little capital
in books. It was a scanty library, but I arrayed it on a table next
my window with pride and satisfaction. I turned over the leaves of my
dictionary with something of the feeling with which a settler in a new
region of the globe might have wandered through his little territory.

My grammars I regarded as mines whose ores were to enrich me; and
my well-thumbed copy of Telemachus, and an odd volume of Lessing's
comedies, were in themselves stores of pleasure and amusement. I suppose
it is a condition of the human mind that makes our enjoyments in the
ratio of the sacrifices they have cost us. I know of myself, that
since that day I now speak of, it has been my fortune to be wealthy, to
possess around me every luxury my wish could compass, and yet I will
own it, that I have never gazed on the well-filled shelves of a costly
library, replete with every comfort, with a tithe of the satisfaction I
then contemplated the two or three dog-eared volumes that lay before me.

My first few days of liberty were passed in planning out the future.
I studied the newspapers in hope of meeting something adapted to my
capacity; but though in appearance no lack of these, I invariably found
some fatal obstacle intervened to prevent my success. At one place,
the requirements were beyond my means; at another, the salary was
insufficient for bare support; and at one I remember my