em_.
Securities are lighter, more ethereal, and more fragile; they do not
exercise the same amount of attachment, and there is more risk of
losing them.

At the present rate this is a bitter contradiction, and though the
rule which I have followed has given me happiness, I would not advise
any one to adopt it. I am too old to change now, and besides I have
nothing to complain of; but I should be afraid of misleading young
people if I told them to do the same. To get the most one can out of
oneself is becoming the rule of the world at large. The idea that the
nobleman is the man who does not make money, and that any commercial
or industrial pursuit, no matter how honest, debases the person
engaged in it, and prevents him from belonging to the highest circle
of humanity is fast fading away. So great is the difference which an
interval of forty years brings about in human affairs. All that I once
did now appears sheer folly, and sometimes in looking around me I fail
to recognise that it is the same world.

The man whose life is devoted to immaterial pursuits is a child in
worldly affairs; he is helpless without a guardian. The world in which
we live is wide enough for every place which is worth taking to be
occupied; every post to be held creates, so to speak, the person to
fill it. I had never imagined that the product of my thought could
have any market value. I had always had an idea of writing, but it
had never occurred to me that it would bring me in any money. I was
greatly astonished, therefore, when a man of pleasant and intelligent
appearance called upon me in my garret one day, and, after
complimenting me upon several articles which I had written, offered
to publish them in a collected form. A stamped agreement which he had
with him specified terms which seemed to me so wonderfully liberal
that when he asked me if all my future writings should be included
in the agreement, I gave my assent. I was tempted to make one or
two observations, but the sight of the stamp stopped me, and I was
unwilling that so fine a piece of paper should be wasted. I did well
to forego them, for M. Michel Levy must have been created by a special
decree of Providence to be my editor. A man of letters who has any
self-respect should write in only one journal and in one review, and
should have only one publisher. M. Michel Levy and myself always got
on very well together. At a subsequent date, he pointed out to me that
the agreement whi