After pausing irresolutely several times before the door of the General Agency Office, Mr Headstone made up his mind to step in, and, upon the actualisation of his resolution, found himself in a little floor-clothed room, with a high desk railed off in one corner, behind which sat a lean youth with cunning eyes and a protruding chin. This perceptive gentleman had a thick ledger lying open before him wherein he was busy inscribing in capital text the latest catalogue of vacant situations, pausing from time to time in his labours only to insert the end of his pen into his mouth as if to ascertain the esculent qualities of said instrument.
Mr Headstone approached the desk and enquired if there were any situation that would suit an educated gentleman temporarily in need of some light employment. The clerk turned to the letter E in his ledger, but found nothing there except an advertisement for an ecclesiastical position in a distant cathedral town; whilst under the letter G there was a position for a gravedigger (with no previous experience required and tools provided) at the Drury Lane Burial Grounds. Being averse to outward expressions of piety and hard labour, Mr Headstone was obliged to decline both offers, and, rejecting the third proposition of an opening at Warren's Blacking Factory as an example of the clerk's ready wit, the pedagogue left the office in as much the same spirit of disappointment as he had entered it.
Mr Charles Dickens
