upon me, I could walk it away; but I do _not_ walk all day long, as
I used to do in those old transient holidays, thirty miles a day, to
make the most of them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it away,
but I do _not_ read in that violent measure, with which, having no
Time my own but candlelight Time, I used to weary out my head and
eyesight in by-gone winters. I walk, read or scribble (as now) just
when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure; I let it come
to me. I am like the man

--That's born, and has his years come to him,
In some green desart.

"Years," you will say! "what is this superannuated simpleton
calculating upon? He has already told us, he is past fifty."

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the
hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you
will find me still a young fellow. For _that_ is the only true Time,
which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to
himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is
other people's time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or
short, is at least multiplied for me three-fold. My ten next years, if
I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair
rule-of-three sum.

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the commencement of my
freedom, and of which all traces are not yet gone, one was, that a
vast tract of time had intervened since I quitted the Counting House.
I could not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The partners,
and the clerks, with whom I had for so many years, and for so many