“It’s a slovenly look
    To blot your book.”

Or,

    “Red ink for ornament, black for use: 
    The best of things are open to abuse.”

So upon the eve of any great holiday, of which he keepeth one or two at least every year, he will merrily say, in the hearing of a confidential friend, but to none other,—­

    “All work and no play’
    Makes Jack a dull boy.”

Or,

    “A bow always bent must crack at last.”

But then this must always be understood to be spoken confidentially, and, as we say, under the rose.

Lastly, his dress is plain, without singularity,—­with no other ornament than the quill, which is the badge of his function, stuck behind the dexter ear, and this rather for convenience of having it at hand, when he hath been called away from his desk, and expecteth to resume his seat there again shortly, than from any delight which he taketh in foppery or ostentation.  The color of his clothes is generally noted to be black rather than brown, brown rather than blue or green.  His whole deportment is staid, modest, and civil.  His motto is “Regularity.”

* * * * *

This character was sketched in an interval of business, to divert some of the melancholy hours of a counting-house.  It is so little a creature of fancy, that it is scarce anything more than a recollection of some of those frugal and economical maxims which about the beginning of the last century (England’s meanest period) were endeavored to be inculcated and instilled into the breasts of the London apprentices[E] by a class of instructors who might not inaptly be termed “The Masters of Mean Morals.”  The astonishing narrowness and illiberality of the lessons contained in some of those books is inconceivable by those whose studies have not led them that way, and would almost induce one to subscribe to the hard censure which Drayton has passed upon the mercantile spirit,—­

    “The gripple merchant, born to be the curse
    Of this brave isle.”

In the laudable endeavor to eke out “a something contracted income,” Lamb, in his younger days, essayed to write lottery-puffs,—­(Byron, we know, was accused of writing lottery-puffs,)—­but he did not succeed very well in the task.  His samples were returned on his hands, as “done in too severe and terse a style.”  Some Grub-Street hack—­a nineteenth-century Tom Brown or Mr. Dash—­succeeded in composing these popular and ingenious productions; but the man who wrote the Essays of Elia could not write a successful lottery-puff.  At this exult, O mediocrity! and take courage, man of genius!

Although Elia was an unsuccessful lottery-puffer, he always took special interest in lotteries, and was present at the drawing of many of them.