We were always more or

less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same

condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly

enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the

best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common

one.

Every morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went into the City to

look about him. I often paid him a visit in the dark back-room in

which he consorted with an ink-jar, a hat-peg, a coal-box, a

string-box, an almanack, a desk and stool, and a ruler; and I do

not remember that I ever saw him do anything else but look about

him. If we all did what we undertake to do, as faithfully as

Herbert did, we might live in a Republic of the Virtues. He had

nothing else to do, poor fellow, except at a certain hour of every

afternoon to "go to Lloyd's" - in observance of a ceremony of

seeing his principal, I think. He never did anything else in

connexion with Lloyd's that I could find out, except come back

again. When he felt his case unusually serious, and that he

positively must find an opening, he would go on 'Change at a busy

time, and walk in and out, in a kind of gloomy country dance

figure, among the assembled magnates. "For," says Herbert to me,

coming home to dinner on one of those special occasions, "I find

the truth to be, Handel, that an opening won't come to one, but one

must go to it - so I have been."

If we had been less attached to one another, I think we must have

hated one another regularly every morning. I detested the chambers

beyond expression at that period of repentance, and could not

endure the sight of the Avenger's livery: which had a more

expensive and a less remunerative appearance then, than at any

other time in the four-and-twenty hours. As we got more and more

into debt breakfast became a hollower and hollower form, and, being

on one occasion at breakfast-time threatened (by letter) with legal

proceedings, "not unwholly unconnected," as my local paper might

put it, "with jewellery," I went so far as to seize the Avenger by

his blue collar and shake him off his feet - so that he was

actually in the air, like a booted Cupid - for presuming to suppose

that we wanted a roll.

At certain times - meaning at uncertain times, for they depended on

our humour - I would say to Herbert, as if it were a remarkable

discovery:

"My dear Herbert, we are getting on badly."

"My dear Handel," Herbert would say to me, in all sincerity, if you

will believe me, those very words were on my lips, by a strange

coincidence."

"Then, Herbert," I would respond, "let us look into out affairs."

We always derived profound satisfaction from making an appointment

for this purpose. I always thought this was business, this was the

way to confront the thing, this was the way to take the foe by the

throat. And I know Herbert thought so too.

We ordered something rather special for dinner, with a bottle of

something similarly out of the common way, in order that our minds

might be fortified for the occasion, and we might come well up to

the mark. Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious

supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper.

For, there was something very comfortable in having plenty of

stationery.

I would then take a sheet of paper, and write across the top of it,

in a neat hand, the heading, "Memorandum of Pip's debts;" with

Barnard's Inn and the date very carefully added. Herbert would also

take a sheet of paper, and write across it with similar

formalities, "Memorandum of Herbert's debts."

Each of us would then refer to a confused heap of papers at his

side, which had been thrown into drawers, worn into holes in

Pockets, half-burnt in lighting candles, stuck for weeks into the

looking-glass, and otherwise damaged. The sound of our pens going,

refreshed us exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it

difficult to distinguish between this edifying business proceeding

and actually paying the money.