I was
living, it is true, not unpleasantly, enjoying the healthy air of heaven;
but, upon the whole, was I not sadly misspending my time? Surely I was;
and, as I looked back, it appeared to me that I had always been doing so.
What had been the profit of the tongues which I had learnt? had they ever
assisted me in the day of hunger? No, no! it appeared to me that I had
always misspent my time, save in one instance, when by a desperate effort
I had collected all the powers of my imagination, and written the Life of
Joseph Sell; but even when I wrote the Life of Sell, was I not in a false
position? Provided I had not misspent my time, would it have been
necessary to make that effort, which, after all, had only enabled me to
leave London, and wander about the country for a time? But could I,
taking all circumstances into consideration, have done better than I had?
With my peculiar temperament and ideas, could I have pursued with
advantage the profession to which my respectable parents had endeavoured
to bring me up? It appeared to me that I could not, and that the hand of
necessity had guided me from my earliest years, until the present night,
in which I found myself seated in the dingle, staring on the brands of
the fire. But ceasing to think of the past which, as irrecoverably gone,
it was useless to regret, even were there cause to regret it, what should
I do in future? Should I write another book like the Life of Joseph
Sell; take it to London, and offer it to a publisher? But when I
reflected on the grisly sufferings which I had undergone whilst engaged
in writing the Life of Sell, I shrank from the idea of a similar attempt;
moreover, I doubted whether I possessed the power to write a similar
work--whether the materials for the life of another Sell lurked within
the recesses of my brain? Had I not better become in reality what I had
hitherto been merely playing at--a tinker or a gypsy? But I soon saw
that I was not fitted to become either in reality.
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