“On Saturday evening, April 13th, I set out with four shillings for Nottingham, and stopped at St. Alban’s. Rising the next morning, April 14th, I met in the street the tailor with the muffled head, whom I had left near Leicester. ‘Ah! my friend, what are you still fighting your way up? Perhaps you will reach London by next Wednesday. You guessed within a week the first time.’ He said but little, looked ashamed, and passed on. “This was a melancholy day. I fell lame, from the sinews of my leg being overstrained with hard labour. I was far from home, wholly among strangers, with only the remnant of four shillings. The dreadful idea operated in fears! “I stopped at Newport Pagnell. My landlord told me ‘my shoes were not fit for travelling;’ however, I had no other, and, like my blistered feet, I must try to bear them. Next day, Monday, 15th, I slept at Market Harborough, and on the 16th called at Leicester. The landlady had carefully secured my knife, with a view to return it should I ever come that way. Reached Nottingham in the afternoon, forty miles. “I had been out nearly nine days;—three in going, which cost three and eightpence; three there, which cost about the same; and three returning, nearly the same. Out of the whole eleven shillings I brought four pence back. “London surprised me; so did the people, for the few with whom I formed a connection deceived me by promising what they never performed, and, I have reason to think, never intended it. This journey furnished vast matter for detail among my friends. “It was time to look out for a future place of residence. A large town must now be the mark, or there would be no room for exertion. London was thought on between my sister and I, for I had no soul else to consult. This was rejected for two reasons. How could I venture into such a place without a capital? And how could my work pass among a crowd of judges? My plan must be to fix upon some market town within a stage of Nottingham, and open a shop on the market-day, till I should be better prepared to begin the world at Birmingham. “I therefore, in the following February, took a journey to that populous place, to pass a propable judgment upon my future success. “I fixed upon Southwell as the first step of elevation, fourteen miles distant, a town as despicable as the road to it. I went over at Michaelmas, took a shop at the rate of 20_s._ a-year, sent a few boards for shelves, tools to put them up, and about two hundred weight of trash, which a bookseller would dignify with the name of books (and with, perhaps, about a year’s rent of my shop); was my own joiner, put up the shelves and their furniture, worth, perhaps, 20s., and in one day became the most eminent bookseller in the place.