made you sure that you would be one day what you are."

"Well, I suppose so; but vague aspirations and self-conceits must be
bound together by some practical necessity--perhaps a very homely and a
very vulgar one--or they scatter and evaporate. One would think that
rich people in high life ought to do more than poor folks in humble life.
More pains are taken with their education; they have more leisure for
following the bent of their genius: yet it is the poor folks, often half
self-educated, and with pinched bellies, that do three-fourths of the
world's grand labour. Poverty is the keenest stimulant; and poverty made
me say, not 'I will do,' but 'I must.'"

"You knew real poverty in childhood, Frank?"

"Real poverty, covered over with sham affluence. My father was Genteel
Poverty, and my mother was Poor Gentility. The sham affluence went when
my father died. The real poverty then came out in all its ugliness. I
was taken from a genteel school, at which, long afterwards, I genteelly
paid the bills; and I had to support my mother somehow or other,--somehow
or other I succeeded. Alas, I fear not genteelly! But before I lost
her, which I did in a few years, she had some comforts which were not
appearances; and she kindly allowed, dear soul, that gentility and shams
do not go well together. Oh, beware of debt, Lionello mio; and never
call that economy meanness which is but the safeguard from mean
degradation."

"I understand you at last, Vance; shake hands: I know why you are
saving."

"Habit now," answered Vance, repressing praise of himself, as usual.