Maintaining Employment

I have held only two offices, and those when I was about eighteen. First I was a waiter, then I was degraded of this, and made a dishwasher. They did not like the way that I spoke, which is why they degraded me. I left this office by my own will, though I must have washed dishes for a few months. The other was a man that mowed and raked meadowlands, and used a leaf blower; of this I worked beneath a man. Of this office I was discharged, though not with observance, but it had not after all been a solemn ministry; for in body I am feeble, and I could not bear summer heat as over the meadows drave I the lawnmower. A few times I had let down my knees to the ground, and the shearing the meadow left, and ground with my teeth at my state, as my sides smarted and my body mourned, and the master did not like that; and by the sun he was a man of skin waxed swart, and sinews great, and I to such abuse a fair lad not wont.