The Cornhill Magazine (Vol. I, No. 3, March 1860)Various
History
The Cornhill Magazine (Vol. I, No. 3, March 1860)
Various
England -- Periodicals; English literature -- Periodicals; Short stories, English -- Periodicals
during his residence at the university, to which he was able to add 5_l._
from previous savings. He got friends to lend him books; and I have an
idea that he earned something on Sundays by acting as precentor in one of
the city churches. I happened to call upon him one day. It was his dinner
hour, and his landlady came in to him with something on an old black
rusty tray. “Not just yet, Mrs. Todd,” he said, in great embarrassment,
and that lady forthwith departed. “Don’t go away,” he then said to me;
“now, don’t; my dinner is never done enough, and, if you stay a little,
I’ll get it properly done to-day.” I left him three minutes afterwards,
and outside his door there was his dinner getting cold—a herring and
three potatoes. He lived in a box of a room, his bed being in one corner
of it; and this accommodation he shared with another man, who worked even
harder than he. This man earned a few shillings by teaching. He went out
to assist boys in learning their lessons for the following day at school;
and the price which he and all such teachers charged was half-a-guinea a
month for an hour every night. As the pay was at the rate of about 5_d._
an hour, it would seem that the teacher had an advantage over our friend
the carpenter; but it must be remembered that the pay of the latter was
obtained by physical labour,—therefore, by a healthy relief from mental
toil,—while that of the former was earned by the continued and unhealthy
strain of the mind. In Edinburgh there are men who work at bookbinding
or printing, who make pills and potions in druggists’ shops, who are
copying-clerks in lawyers’ offices, who report for the newspapers, who
keep the butterman’s books,—in order to maintain themselves at college.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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