Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/423

383 THOMAS TEGG. 383 one and tied it on. " Go to work," said Lane, and thus, " in less than half-an-hour from my arrival, I was at work in one of the best houses in London." Early next morning, map in hand, he took an explor- ing walk, and was astonished and delighted with all he saw, for to the young bookseller, with his mind wrapt up entirely in his projects of success, the per- petual rush of unknown faces that he had never seen before, would never see again the jostling eagerness of crowds, going incessantly this way and that, the noisy din of carts and carriages, the vastness. of the buildings, and the vagueness of the never* ending streets, did not bring that feeling of utter loneliness which so many of us remember in our first solitary entry into London. Nor was the country lad to be beguiled by any of the myriad temptations that were ready on all sides to divide his attention from his business. " I resolved," he writes, " to visit a place of worship every Sunday, and to read no loose or infidel books ; that I would frequent no public-houses, that I would devote my leisure to profitable studies, that I would form no friendships till I knew the parties well, and that I would not go to any theatre till my reason fortified me against my passions." This perseve- rance did not immediately meet with its deserved reward, for having been sent, with the other shopmen, to make an affidavit as to the numbers of an election bill that had been struck ofT, before the Lord Mayor, he said boldly, that he did not even know that they had been printed ; the Lord Mayor was pleased with the answer, and censured Lane severely for tempting the boy to commit a perjury ; and Lane, in his rage, dis- missed him forthwith. Tegg walked out of the shop, clown-hearted for the moment, perhaps, but self-pos-