hey did and felt, and how far it was like what he did and felt himself.
Now, he said he knew all about it. I am not very familiar with the
writer of the Odyssey (who, by the way, I suspect strongly of having been
a clergyman), but he assuredly hit the right nail on the head when he
epitomised his typical wise man as knowing "the ways and farings of many
men." What culture is comparable to this? What a lie, what a sickly
debilitating debauch did not Ernest's school and university career now
seem to him, in comparison with his life in prison and as a tailor in
Blackfriars. I have heard him say he would have gone through all he had
suffered if it were only for the deeper insight it gave him into the
spirit of the Grecian and the Surrey pantomimes. What confidence again
in his own power to swim if thrown into deep waters had not he won
through his experiences during the last three years!

But, as I have said, I thought my godson had now seen as much of the
under currents of life as was likely to be of use to him, and that it was
time he began to live in a style more suitable to his prospects. His
aunt had wished him to kiss the soil, and he had kissed it with a
vengeance; but I did not like the notion of his coming suddenly from the
position of a small shop-keeper to that of a man with an income of
between three and four thousand a year. Too sudden a jump from bad
fortune to good is just as dangerous as one from good to bad; besides,
poverty is very wearing; it is a quasi-embryonic condition, through which
a man had better pass if he is to hold his later developments securely,
but like measles or scarlet fever he had better have it mildly and get it
over early.

No man is safe from losing every penny he has in the world, unless he has
had his facer. How often do I not hear middle-aged women and quiet
family men say that they have no speculative tendency; _they_ never had
touched, and never would touch, any but the very soundest, best reputed
investments, and as for unlimited liability, oh dear! dear! and they
throw up their hands and eyes.

Whenever a person is heard to talk thus he may be recognised as the easy
prey of the first adventurer who comes across him; he will commonly,
indeed, wind up his discourse by saying that in spite of all his natural
caution, and his well knowing how foolish speculation is, yet there are
some investments which are called speculative but in reality are not so,
and he will pull out