Private Income, Independent Of His
Parents, He Had None.
A situation as clerk in a merchant's office was
his only resource, and during three years he had eked out his salary to
support a delicate wife - whose ill health was a neverfailing source of
anxiety and expense - two infants, and himself.
An unexpected legacy of
500 pounds from a distant relative at last seemed to open a brighter
prospect before them; and leaving his wife and children with their
relatives, he quitted England to seek in a distant land a better home than
all his exertions could procure for them in their own country. I never
felt surprised or offended at his silent and preoccupied manner,
accompanied at times by great depression of spirits, for it was an
awful responsibility for one so young, brought up as he had been in the
greatest luxury, as the eldest son of a wealthy merchant, to have not
only himself but others nearest and dearest to maintain by his own
exertions.
William - - -, a tall, slight, and rather delicate looking man, is the
next of our party whom I shall mention. His youth had been passed at
Christ's Hospital. This he quitted with the firm conviction (in which
all his friends of course participated) that he had been greatly
wronged by not having been elected a Grecian; and a rich uncle, incited
by the beforementioned piece of injustice, took him under his care, and
promised to settle him in the world as soon as a short apprenticeship
to business had been gone through.
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