Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/428

19, 1859.]

is the tomb of love,” writes a modern novelist of high standing; but, with every respect for his authority, I beg to say it was quite the contrary in my case.

Twenty-one years ago, I was sitting by my fireside, totting up innumerable pages of my bachelor's housekeeping-book, taking exercise in arithmetic on long columns of “petty cash” — comprising items for carrots and Bath-bricks, metal tacks and mutton chops—until, tired and wearied, I arrived at the sum total, and jerked the book on the mantelpiece. Nearly at the same time I placed my hand in the pocket of my dressing-gown, drew out a leather case, and lit a principe. Well, having lit the principe, I placed my feet on the fender and sighed, exhausted by my long job of domestic accounts. I was then in business—’twas a small wholesale business then, ’tis a large one now—yet one morning's totting of carrots and Bath-bricks, of metal tacks and mutton chops, would tire me a thousand times more than twenty-four hours of honest ledger- work. I sighed, not from love, but from labour; for, to tell you the truth, I had never been in love. Is this to go on for ever? thought I, as I took my third whiff, and looked dreamily through the thin smoke as it ascended between me and a large print of the capture of Gibraltar which hung over the chimney-piece. Am I to spend my prime in totting up parsnips, and computing carrots, and comptrolling washing-bills? I sighed again, and in the act, off dew the button of my neck-band, as though some superior power had seasonably sent the accident to remind me of my helplessness.

The button settled the business; though, as it slipped down inside my shirt, and passed with its mother-o’-pearl coldness over my heart, it for a moment threatened to chill my matrimonial resolution. I pitied my own lonely state, and pity, we know, is akin to love. But how was the matter to be accomplished? Most men at my age would already have adjusted their inclination to some object; so that having made up their mind and counted the cost, little more would have remained to be done than to decide upon the day, and lay hold upon the licence. This, however, was not the case with me. I had been too much occupied, too idle, or too indolent to devote the time or make the effort to “form an attachment.” It was through no disinclination or difficulty to be pleased; for had any young lady of moderately agreeable powers taken the trouble, she might have married me long ere then. I should even have been grateful to her for taking the trouble off my hands; but I was too bashful to adopt the initiative.

I was a bashful man. This weakness came from the same cause as my Uncle Toby’s—namely, a want of acquaintance with female society, which want arose from another cause in my case—namely, too close an application to business.