ereave him of all satisfaction, they inflicted
injury, and were to be shunned as worse evils than death.

I asked to what species of pleasure he alluded, with which the business
of a clerk was inconsistent.

He answered that he scarcely knew how to describe it. He read books when
they came in his way. He had lighted upon few, and, perhaps, the
pleasure they afforded him was owing to their fewness; yet he confessed
that a mode of life which entirely forbade him to read was by no means
to his taste. But this was trivial. He knew how to value the thoughts of
other people, but he could not part with the privilege of observing and
thinking for himself. He wanted business which would suffer at least
nine-tenths of his attention to go free. If it afforded agreeable
employment to that part of his attention which it applied to its own
use, so much the better; but, if it did not, he should not repine. He
should be content with a life whose pleasures were to its pains as nine
are to one. He had tried the trade of a copyist, and in circumstances
more favourable than it was likely he should ever again have an
opportunity of trying it, and he had found that it did not fulfil the
requisite conditions. Whereas the trade of ploughman was friendly to
health, liberty, and pleasure.

The pestilence, if it may so be called, was now declining. The health of
my young friend allowed him to breathe the fresh air and to walk. A
friend of mine, by name Wortley, who had spent two months from the city,
and to whom, in the course of a familiar correspondence, I had mentioned
the foregoing particulars, returned from his rural excursion. He was
posting, on the evening of the day of his arrival, with a friendly
expedition, to my house, when he overtook Mervyn going in the same
direction. He was surprised to find him go before him into my dwelling,
and to discover, which he speedily did, that this was the youth whom I
had so frequently mentioned to him. I was present at their meeting.

There was a strange mixture in the countenance of Wortley when they were
presented to each other. His satisfaction was mingled with surprise, and
his surprise with anger. Mervyn, in his turn, betrayed considerable
embarrassment. Wortley's thoughts were too earnest on some topic to
allow him to converse. He shortly made some excuse for taking leave,
and, rising, addressed himself to the youth with a request that he would
walk home with him. This invitation, delivered in