.
    This, even this, I was determined to endure; to put my shoulder to the
burthen, and support it with unshrinking firmness. Let it not however be
supposed, that I endured it without repining and abhorrence. My time was
divided, between the terrors of an animal that skulks from its pursuers, the
obstinacy of unshrinking firmness, and that elastic revulsion that from time to
time seems to shrivel the very hearts of the miserable. If at one moment I
fiercely defied all the rigours of my fate, at others, and those of frequent
recurrence, I sunk into helpless despondence, I looked forward without hope
through the series of my existence, tears of anguish rushed from my eyes, my
courage became extinct, and I cursed the conscious life that was reproduced with
every returning day.
    Why, upon such occasions I was accustomed to exclaim, - why am I overwhelmed
with the load of existence? Why are all these engines at work to torment me? I
am no murderer; yet, if I were, what worse could I be fated to suffer? How vile,
squalid and disgraceful is the state to which I am condemned! This is not my
place in the roll of existence, the place for which either my temper or my
understanding has prepared me! To what purpose serve the restless aspirations of
my soul, but to make me, like a frighted bird, beat myself in vain against the
inclosure of my cage? Nature, barbarous nature, to me thou hast proved indeed
the worst of step-mothers; endowed me with wishes insatiate, and sunk me in
never-ending degradation!
    I might have thought myself more secure, if I had been in possession of
money upon which to subsist. The necessity of earning for myself the means of
existence, evidently tended to thwart the plan of secrecy to which I was
condemned. Whatever labour I adopted, or deemed myself qualified to discharge,
it was first to be considered how I was to be provided with employment, and
where I was to find an employer or purchaser for my commodities. In the mean
time I had no alternative. The little money with which I had escaped from the
blood hunters was almost wholly expended.
    After the minutest consideration I was able to bestow upon this question, I
determined that literature should be the field of my first experiment. I had
read of money being acquired in this way, and of prices given by the speculators
in this sort of ware to its proper manufacturers. My qualifications I estimated
at a slender valuation. I was not without a conviction that experience and
practice must pave the
