is own soul, to
see what point he had attained--what he could do.

Fifteen years of adventure had hardened into wrought metal a character
never very ductile. Tom was now, in his own way, an altogether
accomplished man of the world, who knew (at least in all companies and
places where he was likely to find himself) exactly what to say, to
do, to make, to seek, and to avoid. Shifty and thrifty as old Greek,
or modern Scot, there were few things he could not invent, and perhaps
nothing he could not endure. He had watched human nature under every
disguise, from the pomp of the ambassador to the war-paint of the
savage, and formed his own clear, hard, shallow, practical estimate
thereof. He looked on it as his raw material, which he had to work up
into subsistence and comfort for himself. He did not wish to live on
men, but live by them he must; and for that purpose he must study
them, and especially their weaknesses. He would not cheat them; for
there was in him an innate vein of honesty, so surly and explosive,
at times, as to give him much trouble. The severest part of his
self-education had been the repression of his dangerous inclination to
call a sham a sham on the spot, and to answer fools according to their
folly. That youthful rashness, however, was now well-nigh subdued,
and Tom could flatter and bully also, when it served his turn--as who
cannot? Let him that is without sin among my readers, cast the first
stone. Self-conscious he was, therefore, in every word and action; not
from morbid vanity, but a necessary consequence of his mode of life.
He had to use men, and therefore to watch how he used them; to watch
every word, gesture, tone of voice, and, in all times and places, do
the fitting thing. It was hard work: but necessary for a man who stood
alone and self-poised in the midst of the universe; fashioning for
himself everywhere, just as far as his arm could reach, some not
intolerable condition; depending on nothing but himself, and caring
for little but himself and the father whom, to do him justice, he
never forgot. If I wished to define Tom Thurnall by one epithet, I
should call him specially an ungodly man--were it not that scriptural
epithets have, now-a-days, such altogether conventional and official
meanings, that one fears to convey, in using them, some notion quite
foreign to the truth. Tom was certainly not one of those ungodly whom
David had to deal with of old, who robbed the widow, and put the
f