e, looked down upon
by everybody, and exposed to insult at every corner. I dreamed of
money-making, and woke up feverish with determination. At last Crowther
gave me a few jobs to do for him in my off-time. They weren't very nice
jobs, and I shouldn't like to explain them to you; but they brought me in
half a sovereign now and then. I began to get an insight into the baser
modes of filling one's pocket. Then something happened; my mother died, and
I became the owner of a house at Notting Hill of fifty pounds rental. I
talked over my situation with Crowther, and he advised me, as it turned
out, thoroughly well. I was to raise money on this house,--not to sell
it,--and take shares in a new music-hall which Crowther was connected with.
There's no reason why I shouldn't tell you; it was the Marlborough. I did
take shares, and at the end of the second twelve months I was drawing a
dividend of sixty per cent. I have never drawn less than thirty, and the
year before last we touched seventy-five. At present I am a shareholder in
three other halls,--and they don't do badly.

'I suppose it isn't only good luck; no doubt I have a sort of talent for
money-making, but I never knew it before I met Crowther. By just opening my
eyes to the fact that money could be earned in other ways than at the
regular kinds of employment, he gave me a start, and I went ahead. There
isn't a man in the world has suffered more than I have for want of money,
and no one ever worked with a fiercer resolve to get out of the hell of
contemptible poverty. It would fill a book, the history of my money-making.
The first big sum I ever was possessed of came to me at the age of
two-and-thirty, when I sold a proprietary club (the one Crowther had a
share in and which I had ultimately got into my own hands) for nine
thousand pounds; but I owed about half of this. I went on and on, and I got
into society; _that_ came through the Marlborough,--a good story, but I
mustn't tell it. At last I married--a rich woman.'

He paused, and I thought, but was not quite sure, that I heard him sigh.

'We won't talk about that either. I shall not marry a rich woman again,
that's all. In fact, I don't care for such people; my best friends, real
friends, are all more or less strugglers, and perhaps there's no harm in
saying that it gives me pleasure to help them when I've a chance. I like to
buy a picture of a poor devil artist. I like to smoke my pipe with good
fellows who never g