Better a million times enter life as a penniless gentleman, who must work
his way up like a man, than as one who creeps on his knees into fortune,
shaming birthright of gentleman or soiling honour of man." Therefore
taking into account the poor cousin's vigilant pride on the /qui vive/
for offence, and the rich cousin's temper (as judged by his letters) rude
enough to resent it, we must own that if Lionel Haughton has at this
moment what is commonly called "a chance," the question as yet is not,
What is that chance? but, What will he do with it? And as the reader
advances in this history, he will acknowledge that there are few
questions in this world so frequently agitated, to which the solution is
more important to each puzzled mortal than that upon which starts every
sage's discovery, every novelist's plot,--that which applies to MAN'S
LIFE, from its first sleep in the cradle, "WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?"