How could I tell Mary of this behaviour of Mrs. Hoggarty, and Mary in such a delicate condition?  And bad as matters were at home, I am sorry to say at the office they began to look still worse.

Not only did Roundhand leave, but Highmore went away.  Abednego became head clerk:  and one day old Abednego came to the place and was shown into the directors’ private room; when he left it, he came trembling, chattering, and cursing downstairs; and had begun, “Shentlemen—­” a speech to the very clerks in the office, when Mr. Brough, with an imploring look, and crying out, “Stop till Saturday!” at length got him into the street.

On Saturday Abednego junior left the office for ever, and I became head clerk with 400_l_. a year salary.  It was a fatal week for the office, too.  On Monday, when I arrived and took my seat at the head desk, and my first read of the newspaper, as was my right, the first thing I read was, “Frightful fire in Houndsditch!  Total destruction of Mr. Meshach’s sealing-wax manufactory and of Mr. Shadrach’s clothing depot, adjoining.  In the former was 20,000_l_. worth of the finest Dutch wax, which the voracious element attacked and devoured in a twinkling.  The latter estimable gentleman had just completed forty thousand suits of clothes for the cavalry of H.H. the Cacique of Poyais.”

Both of these Jewish gents, who were connections of Mr. Abednego, were insured in our office to the full amount of their loss.  The calamity was attributed to the drunkenness of a scoundrelly Irish watchman, who was employed on the premises, and who upset a bottle of whisky in the warehouse of Messrs. Shadrach, and incautiously looked for the liquor with a lighted candle.  The man was brought to our office by his employers; and certainly, as we all could testify, was even then in a state of frightful intoxication.

As if this were not sufficient, in the obituary was announced the demise of Alderman Pash—­Alderman Cally-Pash we used to call him in our lighter hours, knowing his propensity to green fat:  but such a moment as this was no time for joking!  He was insured by our house for 5,000_l_.  And now I saw very well the truth of a remark of Gus’s—­viz., that life-assurance companies go on excellently for a year or two after their establishment, but that it is much more difficult to make them profitable when the assured parties begin to die.

The Jewish fires were the heaviest blows we had had; for though the Waddingley Cotton-mills had been burnt in 1822, at a loss to the Company of 80,000_l_., and though the Patent Erostratus Match Manufactory had exploded in the same year at a charge of 14,000_l_., there were those who said that the loss had not been near so heavy as was supposed—­nay, that the Company had burnt the above-named establishments as advertisements for themselves.  Of these facts I can’t be positive, having never seen the early accounts of the concern.