This present, from the particular service to which it was applied, leads
me naturally to speak of the purpose which had allured me up to London,
and which I had been (to use a forensic word) soliciting from the first
day of my arrival in London to that of my final departure.
In so mighty a world as London it will surprise my readers that I should
not have found some means of starving off the last extremities, of
penury; and it will strike them that two resources at least must have
been open to me--viz., either to seek assistance from the friends of my
family, or to turn my youthful talents and attainments into some channel
of pecuniary emolument. As to the first course, I may observe generally,
that what I dreaded beyond all other evils was the chance of being
reclaimed by my guardians; not doubting that whatever power the law gave
them would have been enforced against me to the utmost--that is, to the
extremity of forcibly restoring me to the school which I had quitted, a
restoration which, as it would in my eyes have been a dishonour, even if
submitted to voluntarily, could not fail, when extorted from me in
contempt and defiance of my own wishes and efforts, to have been a
humiliation worse to me than death, and which would indeed have
terminated in death. I was therefore shy enough of applying for
assistance even in those quarters where I was sure of receiving it, at
the risk of furnishing my guardians with any clue of recovering me.
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