but on the next Sunday his father was at meeting.

He became very soon after this an awakened man; and the tittling and
tattling, and the sneering and gossiping, all over Clapham, and the talk
on 'Change, and the pokes in the waistcoat administered by the wags to
Newcome,--"Newcome, give you joy, my boy;" "Newcome, new partner in
Hobson's;" "Newcome, just take in this paper to Hobson's, they'll do it,
I warrant," etc. etc.; and the groans of the Rev. Gideon Bawls, of the
Rev. Athanasius O'Grady, that eminent convert from Popery, who,
quarrelling with each other, yea, striving one against another, had yet
two sentiments in common, their love for Miss Hobson, their dread, their
hatred of the worldly Newcome; all these squabbles and jokes, and
pribbles and prabbles, look you, may be omitted. As gallantly as he had
married a woman without a penny, as gallantly as he had conquered his
poverty and achieved his own independence, so bravely he went in and won
the great City prize with a fortune of a quarter of a million. And every
one of his old friends, and every honest-hearted fellow who likes to see
shrewdness, and honesty, and courage succeed, was glad of his good
fortune, and said, "Newcome, my boy" (or "Newcome, my buck," if they were
old City cronies, and very familiar), "I give you joy."

Of course Mr. Newcome might have gone into Parliament: of course before
the close of his life he might have been made a baronet: but he eschewed
honours senatorial or blood-red hands. "It wouldn't do," with his good
sense he said; "the Quaker connection wouldn't like it." His wife never
cared about being called Lady Newcome. To manage the great house of
Hobson Brothers and Newcome; to attend to the interests of the enslaved
negro; to awaken the benighted Hottentot to a sense of the truth; to
convert Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Papists; to arouse the indifferent and
often blasphemous mariner; to guide the washerwoman in the right way; to