I know not that I especially
needed the lesson, either in the way of warning or rebuke; but
at any rate, I learned it thoroughly: nor, it gives me pleasure
to reflect, did the truth, as it came home to my perception,
ever cost me a pang, or require to be thrown off in a sigh. In
the way of literary talk, it is true, the Naval Officer--an
excellent fellow, who came into the office with me, and went out
only a little later--would often engage me in a discussion about
one or the other of his favourite topics, Napoleon or
Shakespeare. The Collector's junior clerk, too a young gentleman
who, it was whispered occasionally covered a sheet of Uncle
Sam's letter paper with what (at the distance of a few yards)
looked very much like poetry--used now and then to speak to me
of books, as matters with which I might possibly be conversant.
This was my all of lettered intercourse; and it was quite
sufficient for my necessities.
No longer seeking nor caring that my name should be blasoned
abroad on title-pages, I smiled to think that it had now another
kind of vogue. The Custom-House marker imprinted it, with a
stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto,
and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise,
in testimony that these commodities had paid the impost, and
gone regularly through the office.
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