Oh, sir! talk of meditations among
the tombs--they are nothing so melancholy as the meditations of a poor
devil without penny in pouch, along a line of kitchen windows towards
dinner-time.
At length, when almost reduced to famine and despair, the idea all at
once entered my head, that perhaps I was not so clever a fellow as the
village and myself had supposed. It was the salvation of me. The moment
the idea popped into my brain, it brought conviction and comfort with
it. I awoke as from a dream. I gave up immortal fame to those who could
live on air; took to writing for mere bread, and have ever since led a
very tolerable life of it. There is no man of letters so much at his
ease, sir, as he that has no character to gain or lose. I had to train
myself to it a little, however, and to clip my wings short at first, or
they would have carried me up into poetry in spite of myself. So I
determined to begin by the opposite extreme, and abandoning the higher
regions of the craft, I came plump down to the lowest, and turned
creeper.
"Creeper," interrupted I, "and pray what is that?" Oh, sir! I see you
are ignorant of the language of the craft; a creeper is one who
furnishes the newspapers with paragraphs at so much a line, one that
goes about in quest of misfortunes; attends the Bow-street office; the
courts of justice and every other den of mischief and iniquity. We are
paid at the rate of a penny a line, and as we can sell the same
paragraph to almost every paper, we sometimes pick up a very decent
day's work.
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