, that when (owing to the good advice of the broker
who had advised my father and grandfather before me) I came out in the
end a winner and not a loser, I played no more pranks, but kept
henceforward as nearly in the middle of the middle rut as I could. I
tried in fact to keep my money rather than to make more of it. I had
done with Ernest's money as with my own--that is to say I had let it
alone after investing it in Midland ordinary stock according to Miss
Pontifex's instructions. No amount of trouble would have been likely to
have increased my godson's estate one half so much as it had increased
without my taking any trouble at all.

Midland stock at the end of August 1850, when I sold out Miss Pontifex's
debentures, stood at 32 pounds per 100 pounds. I invested the whole of
Ernest's 15,000 pounds at this price, and did not change the investment
till a few months before the time of which I have been writing
lately--that is to say until September 1861. I then sold at 129 pounds
per share and invested in London and North-Western ordinary stock, which
I was advised was more likely to rise than Midlands now were. I bought
the London and North-Western stock at 93 pounds per 100 pounds, and my
godson now in 1882 still holds it.

The original 15,000 pounds had increased in eleven years to over 60,000
pounds; the accumulated interest, which, of course, I had re-invested,
had come to about 10,000 pounds more, so that Ernest was then worth over
70,000 pounds. At present he is worth nearly double that sum, and all as
the result of leaving well alone.

Large as his property now was, it ought to be increased still further
during the year and a half that remained of his minority, so that on
coming of age he ought to have an income of at least 3500 pounds a year.

I wished him to understand book-keeping by double entry. I had myself as
a young man been compelled to master this not very difficult art; having
acquired it, I have become enamoured of it, and consider it the most
necessary branch of any young man's education after reading and writing.
I was determined, therefore, that Ernest should master it, and proposed
that he should become my steward, book-keeper, and the manager of my
hoardings, for so I called the sum which my ledger showed to have
accumulated from 15,000 to 70,000 pounds. I told him I was going to
begin to spend the income as soon as it had amounted up to 80,000 pounds.

A few days after Ernest's dis