He worked hard, like Jacob, for a wife; he
surpassed his patron in sharp practice; he was made
head clerk; and the same night, encouraged by a hundred
freedoms, depressed by the sense of his youth and his
infirmities, he offered marriage and was received with
laughter. Not a year had passed, before his master,
conscious of growing infirmities, took him for a
partner. He proposed again; he was accepted; led two
years of troubled married life; and awoke one morning
to find his wife had run away with a dashing drummer,
and had left him heavily in debt. The debt, and not
the drummer, was supposed to be the cause of the
hegira; she had concealed her liabilities, they were on
the point of bursting forth, she was weary of Bellairs;
and she took the drummer as she might have taken a cab.
The blow disabled her husband, his partner was dead; he
was now alone in the business, for which he was no
longer fit; the debts hampered him; bankruptcy
followed; and he fled from city to city, falling daily
into lower practice. It is to be considered that he
had been taught, and had learned as a delightful duty,
a kind of business whose highest merit is to escape the
commentaries of the bench: that of the usurious lawyer
in a county town.
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