"Heigho!--Lud, Lud!--Dull as ditch water!--This is my only holiday, yet I don't seem to enjoy it!--for I feel knocked up with my week's work! (A yawn.) What a life mine is, to be sure! Here am I, in my eight-and-twentieth year, and for four long years have been one of the shopmen at Tag-rag & Co.'s, slaving from half-past seven o'clock in the morning till nine at night, and all for a salary of thirty-five pounds a-year, and my board! And Mr. Tag-rag--eugh! what a beast!--is always telling me how high he's raised my salary!! Thirty-five pounds a-year is all I have for lodging, and turning out like a gentleman! 'Pon my soul! it _can't_ last; for sometimes I feel getting desperate--such strange thoughts come into my mind!--Seven shillings a-week do I pay for _this_ cursed hole--(he uttered these words with a bitter emphasis, accompanied by a disgustful look round the little room)--that one couldn't swing a cat in without touching the four sides!--Last winter three of our gents (_i. e._ his fellow-shopmen) came to tea with me one Sunday night; and bitter cold as it was, we four made this cussed dog-hole so hot, we were obliged to open the window!--And as for accommodation--I recollect I had to borrow two nasty chairs from the people below, who on the next Sunday borrowed my only decanter, in return, and, hang them, cracked it!--Curse me, say I, if this life is worth having! It's all the very vanity of vanities--as it's said somewhere in the Bible--and no mistake! Fag, fag, fag, all one's days, and--what for? Thirty-five pounds a-year, and '_no advance!_' (Here occurred a pause and revery, from which he was roused by the clangor of the church-bells.) Bah, bells! ring away till you're all cracked!--Now do you think _I'm_ going to be mewed up in church on this the only day out of the seven I've got to sweeten myself in, and sniff fresh air? A precious joke that would be! (A yawn.) Whew!--after all, I'd almost as lieve sit here; for what's the use of my going out? Everybody I see out is happy, excepting me, and the poor chaps that are like me!--Everybody laughs when they see me, and know that I'm only a tallow-faced counter-jumper--I know that's the odious name we gents go by!--for whom it's no use to go out--for one day in seven can't give one a bloom! Oh, Lord! what's the use of being good-looking, as _some_ chaps say I am?"--Here he instinctively passed his left hand through a profusion of sandy-colored hair, and cast an eye towards the bit of fractured looking-glass which hung against the wall, and had, by faithfully representing to him a by no means ugly set of features (despite the dismal hue of his hair) whenever he chose to appeal to it, afforded him more enjoyment than any other object in the world, for years. "Ah, by Jove! many and many's the fine gal I've done my best to attract the notice of, while I was serving her in the shop--that is, when I've seen her get out of a carriage! There has been luck to many a