These self-reproaches, which were not undeserved, made him ill on the road. He reached Dublin, however, and though the employment which he got there was not nearly so profitable as what he had had in London, love for his parents made him contented, “and took,” he says, “all thoughts of further advantages away, till Mr. Alexander Campbell, a Scotchman in the same printing office with me, getting me in liquor, obtained a promise that I should accompany him to England, where there was a greater likelihood of prosperity. Accordingly he so pressed me, and gave such reasons to my dear parents that it was not worth while to stay there for such small business as we enjoyed, that they consented we should go together: but alas! their melting tears made mine to flow, and bedewed my pillow every night after that I lodged with them. ‘What Tommy,’ my mother would sometimes say, ‘this English damsel of yours, I suppose, is the chiefest reason why you slight us and your native country!’ ‘Well,’ added she, ‘the ways of Providence I know are unsearchable; and whether I live to see you again or no, I shall pray God to be your defender and preserver!’—I thought it not fit to accumulate sorrows to us all, by returning any afflictive answers; but taking an opportunity whilst she was abroad on her business, I embarked with my friend once more for England.” Tommy, however, made the heart of his English damsel sick with hope long deferred. He was provident overmuch; and this he acknowledges even when endeavouring to excuse himself:—“all that I had undergone I must confess,” he says, “I thought were but my just deserts for being so long absent from my dear,” (it had now been an absence of some years,) “and yet I could not well help it. I had a little money it is very true, but no certain home wherein to invite her. I knew she was well fixed; and it pierced me to the very heart to think, if through any miscarriage or misfortune I should alter her condition for the worse instead of the better. Upon this account my letters to her at this time were not so amorously obliging as they ought to have been from a sincere lover; by which she had reason, however she might have been mistaken, to think that I had failed in my part of those tender engagements which had passed between us.”