I wished him to understand book-keeping 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
necessary 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, book-keeper, and the manager of my
hoardings, for so I called the sum which my ledger showed to have
accumulated from 15,000 to 70,000 pounds. I told him I was going to
begin to spend the income as soon as it had amounted up to 80,000 pounds.
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 300 pounds a year for managing (so far indeed as it
required any managing) his own property. This 300 pounds 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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