Time has stolen on unobserved, and _I_ am the head boy now in the school, and look down on the line of boys below me with a condescending interest in such of them as bring to my mind the boy I was myself when I first came here. That little fellow seems to be no part of me; I remember him as something left behind upon the road of life, and almost think of him as of someone else. And the little girl I saw on that first day at Mr. Wickfield's, where is she? Gone also. In her stead, the perfect likeness of the picture, a child likeness no more, moves about the house; and Agnes--my sweet sister, as I call her in my thoughts, my counsellor and friend--the better angel of the lives of all who come within her calm, good, self-denying influence--is quite a woman. It is time for me to have a profession, and my aunt proposes that I should be a proctor in Doctors' Commons. I learn that the proctors are a sort of solicitors, and that the Doctors' Commons is a faded court held near St. Paul's Churchyard, where people's marriages and wills are disposed of and disputes about ships and boats are settled. So I am articled, and later, when my aunt has lost her money, through no fault of her own, but through the rascality of Uriah Heep, and I seek Mr. Spenlow to know if it is possible for my articles to be cancelled, it is, I am assured, Mr. Jorkins who is inexorable. "If it had been my lot to have my hands unfettered, if I had not a partner--Mr. Jorkins," says Mr. Spenlow. "But I know my partner, Copperfield. Mr. Jorkins is _not_ a man to respond to a proposition of this peculiar nature. Mr. Jorkins is very difficult to move from the beaten track." The years pass. I have come legally to man's estate. I have attained the dignity of twenty-one. Let me think what I have achieved. Determined to do something to bring in money, I have mastered the savage mystery of shorthand, and make a respectable income by reporting the debates in Parliament for a morning newspaper. Night after night I record predictions that never come to pass, professions that are never fulfilled, explanations that are only meant to mystify. I have come out in another way. I have taken, with fear and trembling, to authorship. I wrote a little something in secret, and sent it to a magazine, and it was published. Since then I have taken heart to write a good many trifling pieces. My record is nearly finished. Peggotty, a widow, is with my aunt, and Mr. Dick is in the room. "Goodness me!" said my aunt, "who's this you're bringing home?" "Agnes," said I. We were to be married within a fortnight. It was not till I had told Agnes of my love that I learnt from her, as she laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders and looked calmly in my face, that she had loved me all my life. Let me look back once more, for the last time, before I close these leaves. I have advanced in fame and fortune. I have been married ten years, and I see my children playing in the room.