" 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 shopkeeper 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.
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