Before, however, I proceed farther with my own career, I shall notice that of Esau Taylor. There was no species of cunning, of treachery, or of meanness, of which he was not capable. There was none to which he did not resort. His brother clerks hated him; for, to his other properties, he added that of a low tale-bearer. But he was plausible as Lucifer, and with his smooth tongue, and fair professions, he succeeded in ingratiating himself into the chief place in his master's confidence; and eventually was placed by him at the head of his establishment; and, in order further to reward what he considered his singular worth and honesty, he permitted him to have a small share in the firm. But Esau was not one of those whom a small share, or any portion short of the whole, would satisfy. This he accomplished more easily and more speedily than it is possible that even he, with all his guilty cunning, had anticipated. The merchant from whose employment he had supplanted me, and over whom his plausibility and pretended honesty had gained such an ascendency, had a daughter--an only child--who, about the time of Taylor's being admitted into a sort of partnership, returned from a boarding-school in Yorkshire. He immediately conceived that the easiest way to obtain both the father's business and his wealth would be by first securing the daughter's hand. Of anything even bordering upon affection his sordid soul was incapable: but to obtain his object he could assume its appearance, and he could employ the rhapsodies which at times pass for its language. The maiden was young and inexperienced, and with just as much of affectation as made her the more likely to be entangled in the snares of a plausible hypocrite, who adapted his conversation to her taste. The girl began to imagine that she loved him--perhaps she did--but more possibly it was a morbid fancy which she mistook for affection, and which he well knew how to encourage. She became pensive, sighed, and drooped like a lily that is nipped by the frost, and seemed ready to leave her father childless; and the merchant, to save his daughter, consented to her union with Esau Taylor, his managing clerk and nominal partner. The old man lived but a few months after their union, bequeathing to them his fortune and his business; and within a year and a-half his daughter followed him to the grave; to which, it was said, she was hurried through the cruelty and neglect of her husband. Esau was now a rich man, a great man, and withal a bad man--one whose heart was blacker than the darkness of the grave, where his injured, I believe I may say his murdered, wife was buried. We had not met each other for more than five years, and it is possible that he had half forgotten me, or, if he remembered me, considered me unworthy of a thought.