Diary fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Mystery fiction; Short stories, English
18th.--If I had not resolved, after what happened yesterday, to look
only at the cheerful side of things for the future, the events of
to-day would have robbed me of all my courage, at the very outset of
our troubles. First, there was the casting up of our bills, and the
discovery, when the amount of them was balanced against all the money
we have saved up, that we shall only have between three and four pounds
left in the cash-box, after we have got out of debt. Then there was the
sad necessity of writing letters in my husband’s name to the rich people
who were ready to employ him, telling them of the affliction that had
overtaken him, and of the impossibility of his executing their orders
for portraits for the next six months to come. And, lastly, there was
the heart-breaking business for me to go through of giving our landlord
warning, just as we had got comfortably settled in our new abode. If
William could only have gone on with his work, we might have stopped in
this town, and in these clean, comfortable lodgings for at least three
or four months. We have never had the use of a nice empty garret before,
for the children to play in; and I never met with any landlady so
pleasant to deal with in the kitchen as the landlady here. And now we
must leave all this comfort and happiness, and go--I hardly know where.
William, in his bitterness, says to the workhouse; but that shall never
be, if I have to go out to service to prevent it. The darkness is coming
on, and we must save in candles, or I could write much more. Ah, me!
what a day this has been. I have had but one pleasant moment since it
began; and that was in the morning, when I set my little Emily to work
on a bead purse for the kind doctor’s daughter. My child, young as
she is, is wonderfully neat-handed at stringing beads; and even a poor
little empty purse as a token of our gratitude, is better than nothing
at all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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