twenty times his outward show. After awhile he went into the great farm
now occupied by his son Harry, and commenced operations without borrowing
a single shilling. The reason was because he was in no hurry. He slowly
grew his money in the little farm, and then, and not till then, essayed
the greater. Even then he would not have ventured had not the
circumstances been peculiarly favourable. Like the present, it was a time
of depression generally, and in this particular case the former tenant had
lived high and farmed bad. The land was in the worst possible state, the
landlord could not let it, and Hodson was given to understand that he
could have it for next to nothing at first.

Now it was at this crisis of his life that he showed that in his own
sphere he possessed the true attribute of genius. Most men who had
practised rigid economy for twenty years, whose hours, and days, and weeks
had been occupied with little petty details, how to save a penny here and
a fourpenny bit yonder, would have become fossilised in the process. Their
minds would have become as narrow as their ways. They would have shrunk
from any venture, and continued in the old course to the end of their
time.

Old Hodson, mean to the last degree in his way of living, narrow to the
narrowest point where sixpence could be got, nevertheless had a mind. He
saw that his opportunity had come, and he struck. He took the great corn
farm, and left his little place. The whole country side at once pronounced
him mad, and naturally anticipated his failure. The country side did not
yet understand two things. They did not know how much money he had saved,
and they did not know the capacity of his mind. He had not only saved
money, and judiciously invested it, but he had kept it a profound secret,
because he feared if his landlord learnt that he was saving money so fast
the rent of the little farm would have been speedily raised. Here, again,