We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition.
There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did.

To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.
Every morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went into the City to look about him.

I often paid him a visit in the dark back-room in which he consorted with an ink-jar, a hat-peg, a coal-box, a string-box, an almanac, a desk and stool, and a ruler; and I do not remember that I ever saw him do anything else but look about him.

If we all did what we undertake to do, as faithfully as Herbert did, we might live in a Republic of the Virtues.

He had nothing else to do, poor fellow, except at a certain hour of every afternoon to "go to Lloyd's"-- in observance of a ceremony of seeing his principal, I think.