In coming to the fifth epoch of my story, I must solicit the courteous reader to bear patiently with the details I have to relate: they concern less the progression of my fortune, than incidents not uncommon in human life.

The course of my business, and the increase of my means, were both, in a manner, so established, that with health and constancy of purpose, I had no reasonable imagination to authorise me to fear I might not, in due season, retire from the troubles of the store, and of the settlement, and have, between the setting of the sun and the close of the twilight, a time for pastime and pleasantry. That I had, as related in the foregoing pages, an experience both of adversity and sorrow, cannot be questioned; but nothing had I met with to give me cause for distrust, nor to justify me in thinking my success had not been equal to the fairest promises fortune had ever made me. Indeed, that contentment of nature, which enabled me to discern the dawning morn constantly behind the darkest hour, had prepared me to accept both good and ill, with the calm mien and the tranquil heart of equanimity: and therefore I may justly say, without more ado, that the fifth epoch of my life began under circumstances which gave a glowing assurance of continued prosperity, and also of enjoyment, with those moderated desires, which, though often the consequence of disappointment and dismay, are yet the best ingredients of rational happiness. But yet, notwithstanding the wide-spreading tendrils that covered my bower, and the clusters swelling to ripeness among the branches, there was a serpent at the roots, and caterpillars among the fig-leaves that overshadowed me.

In a light and airy passage of my younger years, it will be recollected that I spoke with reminiscences of kindness concerning a monkey. That most diverting creature was called Jacko, and was extraordinarily fond of nuts, and of certain sons of Quakers who attended a school close by, and who, in the intervals between the school-hours, came often to the nail-shop, where my brother and I made our daily bread by hammering iron.