When I think of her patience, her resignation, her unvarying sweetness, her constant cheerfulness, my heart does homage to the virtue and goodness of women.
One fine morning in September I went for the first time to work.

The office of Lawson Brothers was in Lincoln's Inn.

The elder brother seldom if ever appeared; the younger was always there.

He gave me a very kindly welcome, said he hoped I should not find my work tiresome, showed me what I had to do, and, altogether, set me at my ease.
I sighed many times that morning to find of how little use was my college education to me now and I sighed to think how all my dreams, all my hopes and aspirations, had ended behind a clerk's desk, with eighty pounds per annum in lieu of the fortune of which I had dreamed.
After a few days I became used to the novelty and did my best to discharge my duties well.
Hundreds of young men in London lead lives similar to mine, with very little variety; the only way in which I differed from them was that I had my sister Clare to provide for.

Alas! how soon I found out what a small sum eighty pounds a year was! When we had paid the rent of our three rooms, set aside a small sum for clothes and a small sum for food, there was nothing left.