But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day at Christmas, with a full week in the summer to go and air myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire.  This last was a great indulgence; and the prospect of its recurrence, I believe, alone kept me up through the year, and made my durance tolerable.  But when the week came round, did the glittering phantom of the distance keep touch with me? or rather was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most of them?  Where was the quiet, where the promised rest?  Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished.  I was at the desk again, counting upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene before such another snatch would come.  Still the prospect of its coming threw something of an illumination upon the darker side of my captivity.  Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sustained my thraldom.

Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for business.  This, during my latter years, had increased to such a degree, that it was visible in all the lines of my countenance.  My health and my good spirits flagged.  I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, to which I should be found unequal.  Besides my daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like.  I was fifty years of age, and no prospect of emancipation presented itself.  I had grown to my desk, as it were; and the wood had entered into my soul.

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon the trouble legible in my countenance; but I did not know that it had raised the suspicions of any of my employers, when, on the 5th of last month, a day ever to be remembered by me, L——­, the junior partner in the firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly inquired the cause of them.  So taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirmity, and added that I was afraid I should eventually be obliged to resign his service.  He spoke some words of course to hearten me, and there the matter rested.  A whole week I remained labouring under the impression that I had acted imprudently in my disclosure; that I had foolishly given a handle against myself, and had been anticipating my own dismissal.  A week passed in this manner, the most anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole life, when on the evening of the 12th of April, just as I was about quitting my desk to go home (it might be about eight o’clock) I received an awful summons to attend the presence of the whole assembled firm in the formidable back parlour.  I thought, now my time is surely come, I have done for myself, I am going to be told that they have no longer occasion for me.  L——­, I could see, smiled at the terror I was in, which was a little relief to me,—­when to my utter