"What care I," said he to me one day, "about being what they call
a gentleman?" And his manner was almost fierce. "What has being a
gentleman ever done for me except make me less able to prey and more
easy to be preyed upon? It has changed the manner of my being
swindled, that is all. But for your kindness to me I should be
penniless. Thank heaven I have placed my children where I have."
I begged him to keep quiet a little longer and not talk about taking
a shop.
"Will being a gentleman," he said, "bring me money at the last,
and will anything bring me as much peace at the last as money will?
They say that those who have riches enter hardly into the kingdom of
Heaven. By Jove, they do; they are like Struldbrugs; they live and
live and live and are happy for many a long year after they would have
entered into the kingdom of Heaven if they had been poor. I want to
live long and to raise my children, if I see they would be happier for
the raising; that is what I want, and it is not what I am doing now
that will help me. Being a gentleman is a luxury which I cannot
afford, therefore I do not want it. Let me go back to my shop again,
and do things for people which they want done and will pay me for
doing for them.
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