material comforts and advantages out of the question, what ambition
can a man satisfy without money? Take the successful politicians for
instance, and it will be found that almost every one of them is rich.
This country is too full; there is scant room for the individual. Only
intellectual Titans can force their heads above the crowd, and, as a
rule, they have not even then the money to take them higher. If I had
my life over again--and it is my advice to all young men of ability and
ambition--I would leave the old country and settle in America or in one
of the great colonies. There, where the conditions are more elastic and
the competition is not so cruel, a hard-working man of talent does not
need to be endowed with fortune to enable him to rise to the top of the
tree.

Well, my desire was to be accomplished, for as it chanced a younger
brother of my father, who during his lifetime had never taken any notice
of me, died and left me 750 pounds. Seven hundred and fifty pounds! To
me at that time it was colossal wealth, for it enabled us to rent
some rooms in London, where I entered myself as a medical student at
University College.

There is no need for me to dwell upon my college career, but if any one
were to take the trouble to consult the old records he would find that
it was sufficiently brilliant. I worked hard, and I had a natural,
perhaps an hereditary liking, for the work. Medicine always fascinated
me. I think it the greatest of the sciences, and from the beginning I
was determined that I would be among the greatest of its masters.

At four and twenty, having finished my curriculum with high honours--I
was gold medallist of my year in both medicine and surgery--I became
house-surgeon to one of the London hospitals. After my term of office