"From the midst of books, papers, bills, and other implements of gain,
let me lift up my drowsy head awhile to converse with dear Julia. And
first, as I know she has a fervent wish to see me a quill-driver, I must
tell her that I begin, as people are wont to do, to look upon my future
profession with great partiality. I no longer see it in so
disadvantageous a light. Instead of figuring a merchant as a middle-aged
man, with a bob wig, a rough beard, in snuff-coloured clothes, grasping
a guinea in his red hand, I conceive a comely young man, with a
tolerable pig-tail, wielding a pen with all the noble fierceness of the
Duke of Marlborough brandishing a truncheon upon a sign-post, surrounded
with types and emblems, and canopied with cornucopias that disembogue
their stores upon his head; Mercuries reclin'd upon bales of goods;
Genii playing with pens, ink, and paper; while, in perspective, his
gorgeous vessels 'launched on the bosom of the silver Thames' are
wafting to distant lands the produce of this commercial nation. Thus all
the mercantile glories crowd on my fancy, emblazoned in the most
effulgent colouring of an ardent imagination.
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