Paine was “a tall, thin, ill-looking man. He had a fiend-like countenance, and frequently indulged in oaths and blasphemy.” After a nine months’ sojourn, Tegg left Sheffield, and having visited Ireland and North Wales, entered the service of a Mr. Marshall, at Lynn, where he remained for three or four years. Early in 1796, however, he mounted the London and Cambridge coach, and, with a few shillings in his pockets, with a light heart in his breast, he bade good-bye to friends, telling them that he would never come back till he could drive down in his carriage. On the coach he met some other young men, who, like himself, were going up to London in search of employment, but who intended to spend the first few days in sight-seeing, and asked him to join their party. But Tegg resisted the temptation, and when London, the London of his dreams--but how black, smoke-filled, and inhospitable!--was really reached, he alighted at the Green Dragon in Bishopsgate Street, and, struggling through the busy stream of men who filled the city streets, he went straightway in search of employment, to the first book-shop that met his eyes. This happened to be Mr. Lane’s “Minerva Library,” in Leadenhall Street. “What can you do?” asked Lane. “My best,” rejoined Tegg. “Do you wear an apron?” Tegg produced 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 exploring 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 perpetual 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 perseverance 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 off, 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,