Two Days Before This Date, My Scotch Book-Keeper Came To Me To
Report That In Balancing The Books He Was Out The Small Sum Of
1s. 10d. (I Think It Was), And He Proposed To Carry That
To Profit And Loss ("Profeet And Loasse," He Said).
To which I, of
course, replied, "My good friend, a failure to balance of even a penny
may conceal errors on the two sides of the account by the hundred.
Set
all hands to work to call over every item." We set to work, and I was
up the best part of one, and the whole of another, night. I was so
anxious that I did not feel to want food; and drink I was unused to. A
beefsteak and a pint of stout would have saved me from ten years, more
or less, of suffering, weakness, and all kinds of misery. In the early
morning of the day on which we were to begin paying off our
shareholders, the books balanced. We had discovered errors, both to
debit and credit, probably a hundred at least in number.
It was a clear, cold morning. I went out to a little barber's shop and
got shaved. I did not feel in want of food - and took none. At ten
o'clock shareholders began to arrive: got their cheques, and went away
satisfied. One of them, who would gain about 30,000l., actually
gave me a 5l. note for the clerks, which was the only expression
of gratitude of a practical character, so far as I remember, now. About
noon Mr. Henry Houldsworth, the father of the present member for
Manchester, called for his cheque; and, chatting with him at the time,
as I was making the upstroke of the letter H in "Houldsworth," I felt
as if my whole body was forced up into my head, and that was ready to
burst. I raised my head, and this strange feeling went away. I thought,
how strange! I tried again, the same feeling came again and again,
till, with a face white as paper, that alarmed those about me, I fell
forward on the desk. Water was given me; but I could not swallow it. I
never lost entire consciousness; but I thought I was going to die. I
never can forget all that in those moments passed through my brain.
They put me into a carriage, and took me to the consulting room, in
Mosley Street, of my old friend William Smith, the celebrated
Manchester surgeon, nephew of the great Mr. Turner, the surgeon. He
placed me on a sofa, and asked me what it was, - feeling, or trying to
find, my pulse the while. I whispered, "Up all night - over-anxious - no
food." He gave me brandy and soda water, and a biscuit, and told me to
lie still. I had never tasted this popular drink before. In about a
quarter of an hour I felt better, got up, and said, "Oh! I am all right
now." But Mr. Smith, nevertheless, ordered me to go home at once, go to
bed, take a pill - I assume, a narcotic - which he gave me, and not to
get up till he had seen me in the morning.
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