" 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 shop-keeper 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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