Only let me end in winning Alicia, and I am resigned to the loss of whatever small shreds and patches of respectability still hang about me--such was my philosophy.
I wish I could have taken higher moral ground with equally consoling results to my own feelings.
The same regard for the well-being of society which led me to abstain from entering into particulars on the subject of Old Master-making, when I was apprenticed to Mr.Ishmael Pickup, now commands me to be equally discreet on the kindred subject of Half-Crown-making, under the auspices of Old File, Young File, Mill, and Screw.
Let me merely record that I was a kind of machine in the hands of these four skilled workmen.

I moved from room to room, and from process to process, the creature of their directing eyes and guiding hands.

I cut myself, I burned myself, I got speechless from fatigue, and giddy from want of sleep.

In short, the sun of the new day was high in the heavens before it was necessary to disturb Doctor Dulcifer.

It had absolutely taken me almost as long to manufacture a half-a-crown feloniously as it takes a respectable man to make it honestly.