; rules to set the soul right in sickness; so that in this
        treatise are contained all the rules requisite for salvation. The 8th
        edition with additions. Price 10d.
            * * * An allowance will be made to those who give them away.«
 
Before he had been many years a partner the advertisement stood as follows: -
 
        »The Pious Country Parishioner. A complete manual of Christian Devotion.
        Price 10d.
            A reduction will be made to purchasers for gratuitous distribution.«
 
What a stride is made in the foregoing towards the modern standard, and what
intelligence is involved in the perception of the unseemliness of the old style,
when others did not perceive it!
    Where then was the weak place in George Pontifex's armour? I suppose in the
fact that he had risen too rapidly. It would almost seem as if a transmitted
education of some generations is necessary for the due enjoyment of great
wealth. Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable
with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single
lifetime. Nevertheless a certain kind of good fortune generally attends
self-made men to the last. It is their children of the first, or first and
second, generation who are in greater danger, for the race can no more repeat
its most successful performances suddenly and without its ebbings and flowings
of success than the individual can do so, and the more brilliant the success in
any one generation, the greater as a general rule the subsequent exhaustion
until time has been allowed for recovery. Hence it often happens that the
grandson of a successful man will be more successful than the son - the spirit
that actuated the grandfather having lain fallow in the son and being refreshed
by repose so as to be ready for fresh exertion in the grandson. A very
successful man, moreover, has something of the hybrid in him; he is a new
animal, arising from the coming together of many unfamiliar elements and it is
well known that the reproduction of abnormal growths, whether animal or
vegetable, is irregular and not to be depended upon, even when they are not
absolutely sterile.
    And certainly Mr. Pontifex's success was exceedingly rapid. Only a few years
after he had become a partner his uncle and aunt both died within a few months
of one another. It was then found that they had made him their heir. He was thus
not only sole partner in the business, but found himself with a fortune of some
£30,000 into the bargain, and this was a large sum in those days. Money came
pouring in upon