' Tears started in my eyes, burning tears;
for there are situations in which a wretch is humbled by the contempt
they are conscious they do not deserve.
"I returned to the metropolis; but the solitude of a poor
lodging was inconceivably dreary, after the society I had enjoyed.
To be cut off from human converse, now I had been taught to relish
it, was to wander a ghost among the living. Besides, I foresaw, to
aggravate the severity of my fate, that my little pittance would
soon melt away. I endeavoured to obtain needlework; but, not having
been taught early, and my hands being rendered clumsy by hard work,
I did not sufficiently excel to be employed by the ready-made linen
shops, when so many women, better qualified, were suing for it.
The want of a character prevented my getting a place; for, irksome
as servitude would have been to me, I should have made another
trial, had it been feasible. Not that I disliked employment,
but the inequality of condition to which I must have submitted.
I had acquired a taste for literature, during the five years
I had lived with a literary man, occasionally conversing with
men of the first abilities of the age; and now to descend
to the lowest vulgarity, was a degree of wretchedness
not to be imagined unfelt.
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