could not understand any man of sense bringing his son up as a
gentleman. In those days as in these, gentlemen were found and not
made, but the expression "bringing a man up as a gentleman" meant
bringing him up to be idle.

When my father gambled in the City, he took risks with his own
rather than other people's money. I heard him say to a South
African millionaire:

"You did not make your money out of mines, but out of mugs like
me, my dear fellow!"

A whole chapter might be devoted to stories about his adventures
in speculation, but I will give only one. As a young man he was
put by my grandfather into a firm in Liverpool and made L30,000 on
the French Bourse before he was twenty-four. On hearing of this,
his father wrote and apologised to the head of the firm, saying he
was willing to withdraw his son Charles if he had in any way
shocked them by risking a loss which he could never have paid. The
answer was a request that the said "son Charles" should become a
partner in the firm.

Born a little quicker, more punctual and more alive than other
people, he suffered fools not at all. He could not modify himself
in any way; he was the same man in his nursery, his school and his
office, the same man in church, club, city or suburbs.

[Footnote: My mother, Emma Winsloe, came of quite a different
class from my father. His ancestor of earliest memory was factor
to Lord Bute, whose ploughman was Robert Burns, the poet. His