Deliberations with Self-Resolution - Invitation to Dinner -The Commercial Traveller - The Landlord's Offer - The Comet Wine.
IT was now that I had frequent deliberations with myself.
Should I continue at the inn in my present position? I was not very much captivated with it; there was little poetry in keeping an account of the corn, hay, and straw which came in, and was given out, and I was fond of poetry; moreover, there was no glory at all to be expected in doing so, and I was fond of glory.Should I give up that situation, and remaining at the inn, become ostler under old Bill? There was more poetry in rubbing down horses than in keeping an account of straw, hay, and corn; there was also some prospect of glory attached to the situation of ostler, for the grooms and stable-boys occasionally talked of an ostler, a great way down the road, who had been presented by some sporting people, not with a silver vase, as our governor had been, but with a silver currycomb, in testimony of their admiration for his skill; but I confess that the poetry of rubbing down had become, as all other poetry becomes, rather prosy by frequent repetition, and with respect to the chance of deriving glory from the employment, I entertained, in the event of my determining to stay, very slight hope of ever attaining skill in the ostler art sufficient to induce sporting people to bestow upon me a silver currycomb.I was not half so good an ostler as old Bill, who had never been presented with a silver currycomb, and I never expected to become so, therefore what chance had I? It was true, there was a prospect of some pecuniary emolument to be derived by remaining in either situation.It was very probable that, provided I continued to keep an account of the hay and corn coming in and expended, the landlord would consent to allow me a pound a week, which at the end of a dozen years, provided I kept myself sober, would amount to a considerable sum.I might, on the retirement of old Bill, by taking his place, save up a decent sum of money, provided, unlike him, Ikept myself sober, and laid by all the shillings and sixpences I got; but the prospect of laying up a decent sum of money was not of sufficient importance to induce me to continue either at my wooden desk, or in the inn-yard.The reader will remember what difficulty I had to make up my mind to become a merchant under the Armenian's auspices, even with the prospect of making two or three hundred thousand pounds by following the Armenian way of doing business, so it was not probable that I should feel disposed to be a book-keeper or ostler all my life with no other prospect than being able to make a tidy sum of money.If indeed, besides the prospect of making a tidy sum at the end of perhaps forty years'
ostlering, I had been certain of being presented with a silver currycomb with my name engraved upon it, which I might have left to my descendants, or, in default thereof, to the parish church destined to contain my bones, with directions that it might be soldered into the wall above the arch leading from the body of the church into the chancel - I will not say with such a certainty of immortality, combined with such a prospect of moderate pecuniary advantage, - I might not have thought it worth my while to stay, but I entertained no such certainty, and, taking everything into consideration, I determined to mount my horse and leave the inn.
This horse had caused me for some time past no little perplexity; I had frequently repented of having purchased him, more especially as the purchase had been made with another person's money, and had more than once shown him to people who, I imagined, were likely to purchase him; but, though they were profuse in his praise, as people generally are in the praise of what they don't intend to purchase, they never made me an offer, and now that I had determined to mount on his back and ride away, what was I to do with him in the sequel? I could not maintain him long.Suddenly Ibethought me of Horncastle, which Francis Ardry had mentioned as a place where the horse was likely to find a purchaser, and not having determined upon any particular place to which to repair, I thought that I could do no better than betake myself to Horncastle in the first instance, and there endeavour to dispose of my horse.
On making inquiries with respect to the situation of Horncastle, and the time when the fair would be held, Ilearned that the town was situated in Lincolnshire, about a hundred and fifty miles from the inn at which I was at present sojourning, and that the fair would be held nominally within about a month, but that it was always requisite to be on the spot some days before the nominal day of the fair, as all the best horses were generally sold before that time, and the people who came to purchase gone away with what they had bought.
