Admitted Among the Lawyers

My labors were so far successful that I could prosecute my studies
with independence. I had left the dwelling of my uncle the moment
I took employment in the mercantile house. My salary, though small,
was ample; with my habits, it was particularly so. I had few of
those vices in which young men are apt to indulge, and which, when
they become habits, cease unhappily to be regarded as vices. I used
tobacco in no shape, and no ardent spirits. I needed no stimulants,
and, by the way, true industry never does. It is only indolence that
needs drink; and indolence does need it; and the sooner drunkenness
kills indolence by the use of drink, the better for society. The
only objection to liquors as an agent for ridding the community of
a nuisance, is, that it is rather too slow, and too offensive in
its detailed operations; arsenic would be far less offensive, more
summary, and is far more certain. You would seek vainly to cure
drunkenness, unless you first cure the idleness which is its root
and strength, and, while they last, its permanent support. But my
object is not homily.

If I was free from vices such as these, however, I had vices of my
own, which were only less odious as they were less obvious. That
vexing, self-tormenting spirit of which I have spoken as the evil
genius that dogged my footsteps--that moral perverseness which
I have described as the "blind heart"--still afflicted me, though
in a far less degree now than when I was the inmate of my uncle's
dwelling, and exposed to all the caprices of himself, his wife
and servants. I kept on good terms with my employers, for the very
natural reason that they saw me attend to my business and theirs,
with a hearty cheerfulness that went to work promptly in whatever
was to be done, and executed its tasks with steady fortitude,
neatness, and rapidity. But, even with them, I had my sulks--my
humors--my stubborn fits of sullenness, that seemed anxious to provoke
opposition, and awaken wrath. These, however, they considerately
forgave in consideration of my real usefulness: and as they perceived
that whatever might have been the unpleasantness occasioned by
these specimens of spleen, they were never suffered to interfere
with or retard the operations of business. "It's an ugly way he's
got," was, probably, the utmost extent of what either of the partners
said, and of what is commonly said on such occasions by most persons,
who do not care to trouble themselves with a too close inquiry.