Yet my reflections were not the most comfortable. I began to
grow melancholy and restless; continually prying into my mind,
to discover which of its poor properties were gone, and what
degree of detriment had already accrued to the remainder. I
endeavoured to calculate how much longer I could stay in the
Custom-House, and yet go forth a man. To confess the truth, it
was my greatest apprehension--as it would never be a measure of
policy to turn out so quiet an individual as myself; and it
being hardly in the nature of a public officer to resign--it was
my chief trouble, therefore, that I was likely to grow grey and
decrepit in the Surveyorship, and become much such another
animal as the old Inspector. Might it not, in the tedious lapse
of official life that lay before me, finally be with me as it
was with this venerable friend--to make the dinner-hour the
nucleus of the day, and to spend the rest of it, as an old dog
spends it, asleep in the sunshine or in the shade? A dreary
look-forward, this, for a man who felt it to be the best
definition of happiness to live throughout the whole range of
his faculties and sensibilities.
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