pounds a week, and not many chances to rise come in the way of a clerk
at two pounds a week; he must be pretty sharp, and if he doesn't seize
the little chance when it comes, he will remain a little clerk all his
life. It is the first steps that are difficult, the rest are nothing.
You don't know what the first steps are; I do. Once you've made a
thousand pounds you can swim along a bit, but the first hundred, I
shall never forget it! Afterwards it is just the same; the proportions
are changed, that is all. The first twenty thousand is very uphill
work, the second is on the flat, the third is going downhill--it
brings itself along."

"A very good simile indeed. There's no doubt that it is money that
makes money. When you have none you cannot make it. It is like corn;
give a man a handful, and he must be a fool if he can't fill his barn.
The beginnings are hard; none knows that better than I. But for the
last ten years I've been doing fairly well."

"I had never intended to get married, but when money really begins to
accumulate it pushes you along. It is curious how money takes you
along. It is like a tide. You first begin thinking of a little place
in the country where you can stay from Saturday till Monday. The
little place grows; it is extraordinary how it grows. You find you
want flowers, and you put up a glass house; then you begin to get
interested in orchids or roses, and you put up two, maybe half a dozen
glass houses. Suddenly you find the rabbits are breeding in the
hedgerows, and you go out yonder ferretting, but the coachman does not
know how to manage the ferrets, and you start a keeper. The keeper
says one morning, 'It wouldn't require much to get up a stock of
pheasants in that little wood.' You say, 'Very well;' and there you
are before you know it, with glass houses, rabbit-shooting, and a