ABSTRACT
I am told that instead of spending my hard-earned money in visiting places of amusement, I ought to imitate my shopmate Jones, who will go home after a hard day’s work and employ himself in cultivating his garden, or making or repairing some article of household furniture; or to take example by Brown, who devotes his evenings to serious study, and the acquisition of some art or science. But from doing as Jones does I may readily be excused, as I am a single man, and being ‘only a lodger’, I have neither garden or household furniture, or indeed anything else in the ‘domestic economy’ line to exercise my industry or mechanical ingenuity upon; and as to imitating Brown, I may as well at once confess that that I have in my composition none of that determined perseverance and untiring patience that produces ‘self-made’ and ‘self-taught’ men…
