I wished him to understand bookkeeping 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 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, bookkeeper, and the manager
of my hoardings, for I called the sum which my ledger showed to have
accumulated from L15,000 to L70,000. I told him I was going to begin
to spend the income as soon as it had mounted up to L80,000.
A few days after Ernest's discovery that he was still a bachelor,
while he was still at the very beginning of the honeymoon, as it were,
of his renewed unmarried life, I broached my scheme, desired him to
give up his shop, and offered him L300 a year for managing (so far
indeed as it required any managing) his own property. This L300 a
year, I need hardly say, I made him charge to the estate.
If anything had been wanting to complete his happiness it was
this. Here, within three or four days he found himself freed from
one of the most hideous, hopeless liaisons imaginable, and at the same
time raised from a life of almost squalor to the enjoyment of what
would to him be a handsome income.
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