A clerk--Sydney by name--over whose head I had risen, had often invited me to visit him; I spent one Sunday with him. He lived half-a-dozen miles from the City, and his salary at the time I visited him was a hundred and seventy-five pounds a year. I was then making, with my salary and speculations, at least a thousand. He was a married man, with a pretty wife and a baby. The house in which they lived was small, and there was a garden attached to it. After dinner we sat in the garden and talked; he told his wife what a clever fellow I was, and how I had risen over all of them. I told him that he could do as well as I if he chose, although I was inwardly sure he could not, for his qualities were different from mine. 'You have only to speculate,' I said. He returned a foolish answer. 'This is my speculation,' he said, pinching his wife's cheek. 'Is it a good one?' his wife asked merrily. I do not know what there was in the look he gave her which caused her to bend towards him and kiss him; I think there were tears in her eyes too. 'Well,' I said, 'every one to his taste.' 'Just so,' he replied, with his arm round his wife's waist In the evening, your mother, then a single girl, came in with her father. They and the Sydneys were friends. [Illustration] Now, to whom am I speaking? To myself or to you? Shall I go on with my confession, and go on without moral trickery, or shall I tear up these sheets, and deaden my memory with excess of some kind? It is rather late in life for me to commence this latter course. I have often been drunk with excitement, but never with wine. My life has been a steady one, and it has been my study to keep a guard over myself. Indeed, it has been necessary for success, and I _have_ succeeded. 'When the wine is in, the wit is out'--a true proverb. Why am I debating about my course? I have already decided that I will speak plainly, and will strip myself of all reserve. When I have finished, I can destroy. I will not waver; I will go on to the end.