"You can do _anything_, can you?" said the first merchant, sarcastically; "then you are a great deal too clever for me; and I suspect the situation of a servant of _all work_ will suit you better than that of a clerk in a counting-house. Pray, are you acquainted with keeping books?"
"Then," added he, "though you can do everything, that is one thing which I find you cannot do; and as it is the only thing that would be of any service to me, I shall not be able to avail myself of your otherwise universal attainments."
The cold, the sarcastic manner of this gentleman, made my very blood to freeze within my veins; a cold shivering (I might call it the mantle of despair) came over me, and my heart failed within me. I, however, proceeded to Dale Street, and delivered my letter to the other gentleman. He, as I have already intimated to you, inquired at me what I could do. And to him, also, my unfortunate answer was "_anything_." He smiled, but there was a kindness in his smile, and he good-humouredly asked me what I meant by anything. I was as much at a loss to answer him, as I had been to answer the merchant I had left.
"Have you ever been in a merchant's office?" he inquired, "or had any practice as an accountant?"
"Then," added he, "I fear it will be difficult to find anything in Liverpool to answer your expectations, and I would not recommend you to waste time in it. If I could have promoted your views, I would have done so most cheerfully; but, as I cannot, here are three guineas--(for from the manner in which my friend speaks of you in his letter I believe you to be a deserving youth)--they will help you onward in your journey, and in London you will meet with many chances of obtaining a situation, that you cannot find in Liverpool."
I burst into tears as he spoke, and put the money in my hands. The kindness of the one merchant had affected me more than the chilling irony of the other. The one roused my indignation, the other melted my heart. But I was indebted to both; for both had given me a lesson of what the world was, and both had rendered me more sensible of the dependence and hopelessness of my situation.
In order to husband my resources, I proceeded to London on foot, and when I arrived there, I found myself to be like a bird in a wilderness, or a helmless vessel on a dark sea. The magnitude of the city, its busy thousands, its groaning warehouses, where the treasures and luxuries of every corner of the globe are piled together, the splendour of its shops, the magnificence of its squares, and the lordly equipages which glittered in the midst of them, moved me not. They scarcely excited my observation. My soul was filled with thoughts of my own prospects; and I wandered, dreaming, from street to street, moving at a pace as though I had been sauntering by the side of one of my native lakes, and I appeared as the only individual in the great city who had no aim, and no urgent business which required me to move rapidly, as others did. I delivered all the letters that I brought with me, and I was again asked, as I had been in Liverpool--_what I could do?_ But I did not, as I did there, reply, _anything_. I, however, was puzzled how to answer the question. The truth was, I was utterly ignorant of business. I had been brought up amongst those mountains, with merely a knowledge that there was such a thing. In fact, my ideas of it hardly extended beyond giving out goods with one hand, and receiving money for them in the other. The word _commerce_ was to me as a phrase in a dead language. I had fancied to myself that the sea was a great lake, over the whole expanse of which I should be able to gaze at once, and see the four quarters of the globe around it: and my ideas of what ships were, were gathered from the boats which I had seen upon Keswick. On the day on which I left my parents' roof, I heard my old schoolmaster console them with the assurance, that "there was no fear of me, for _I was fit for anything_." While such testimony, from his lips, comforted them, it cheered me also, and it caused me to look upon myself as a youth of high promise, and of yet higher expectations. But now, when I was left to myself, with all my talents and acquirements ready to be disposed of in any market, I found that my general qualifications, my fitness for anything, amounted to being qualified for nothing, when reduced to particulars. Days, weeks, months passed away, and I was still a wanderer upon the streets of the modern Babylon.