se squabbles and jokes, and
pribbles and prabbles, look you, may be omitted. As gallantly as he had
married a woman without a penny, as gallantly as he had conquered his
poverty and achieved his own independence, so bravely he went in and won
the great City prize with a fortune of a quarter of a million. And every
one of his old friends, and every honest-hearted fellow who likes to
see shrewdness, and honesty, and courage succeed, was glad of his good
fortune, and said, "Newcome, my boy" (or "Newcome, my buck," if they
were old City cronies, and very familiar), "I give you joy."

Of course Mr. Newcome might have gone into Parliament: of course before
the close of his life he might have been made a baronet: but he eschewed
honours senatorial or blood-red hands. "It wouldn't do," with his good
sense he said; "the Quaker connection wouldn't like it." His wife never
cared about being called Lady Newcome. To manage the great house of
Hobson Brothers and Newcome; to attend to the interests of the enslaved
negro; to awaken the benighted Hottentot to a sense of the truth; to
convert Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Papists; to arouse the indifferent
and often blasphemous mariner; to guide the washerwoman in the right
way; to head all the public charities of her sect, and do a thousand
secret kindnesses that none knew of; to answer myriads of letters,
pension endless ministers, and supply their teeming wives with
continuous baby-linen; to hear preachers daily bawling for hours, and
listen untired on her knees after a long day's labour, while florid
rhapsodists belaboured cushions above her with wearisome benedictions;
all these things had this woman to do, and for near fourscore years she
fought her fight womanfully: imperious but deserving to rule, hard but
doing her duty, severe but charitable, and untiring in generosity as
in labour; unforgiving in one instance--in that of her husband's eldest
son, Thomas Newcome; the little boy who had played on the hay, and whom
at first she had loved very sternly and fondly.

Mr. Thomas Newcome, the father of his wife's twin boys, the junior
partner of the house of Hobson Brothers and Co., lived several
years after winning the great prize about which all his friends so
congratulated him. But he was, after all, only the junior partner of the
house. His wife was manager in Threadneedle Street and at home--when the
clerical gentlemen prayed they importuned Heaven for that sainted woman
a long time