The first two letters were full of hopeful allusions to the writer’s prospects. The young man seemed to fancy he was going to make a royal progress through the different grades of his profession, and there was scarcely any limit to the pleasant things which he promised his only sister. But, in the third letter, written after an interval of six months, all this was changed. The life of an articled clerk was a slavery, compared to which the existence of a negro in the West Indian sugar-plantations must be one perpetual delight. Daniel was tired of his profession, and informed his dearest Sissy, in strict confidence, that no power on earth would ever make a lawyer of him. “It isn’t me, my dear Celia,” he wrote; “your impetuous Dan is not fashioned out of the stuff which makes an attorney. I’ve tried to take to the law, just as I tried to take to the circulating-library and fancy-stationery business, to please poor father and mother; but it’s no use. You mustn’t say anything to the dear old dad, for he’d begin to be unhappy about the money he wasted on my articles; and before he discovers that I don’t take to the law, I shall have taken to something which will make me a rich man, and I shall be able to give him back his money three times over.” And then Daniel Mayfield went on to give a flourishing description of a very bright and splendid castle-in-the-air which he had lately erected. He had found a Pactolus in his inkstand, and something better than a landed estate in a quire of foolscap. He was a genius. The divine _afflatus_ had descended upon him, and Coke and Blackstone might go hang. He was a poet, an essayist, an historian, a novelist, a playwright--anything you like. He had been a scribbler from the days of his childhood, and of late had scribbled more than ever. And after the innumerable failures and disappointments which constitute that Slough of Despond through which every literary aspirant must pass, he had succeeded in getting an article inserted in one of those coarsely-written and poorly-illustrated comic periodicals from the ashes whereof arose that bright Phoenix, _Punch_. And the editor of the periodical had promised to take further contributions from the same lively pen, Daniel informed his sister. He had received two guineas sterling coin of the realm for his lucubration, “thrown off in half an hour,” he told dear Sissy. And thereupon he entered into a calculation of his future income, at the rate of four guineas an hour for all the working-hours in the day. “Messrs. Screwem and Swindleton don’t get as much for their time, in spite of their genius for running up the six-and-eightpences,” wrote Daniel.