'It's a lottery with big prizes in the wheel all the same! I could tell you
the names of great swells, Master Dick, who have made very proud places for
themselves in England by what you call "journalism." In France it is the
one road to eminence. Cannot you imagine, besides, what capital fun it is
to be able to talk to scores of people you were never introduced to? to
tell them an infinity of things on public matters, or now and then about
themselves; and in so many moods as you have tempers, to warn them, scold,
compassionate, correct, console, or abuse them? to tell them not to be
over-confident or bumptious, or purse-proud--'

'And who are _you_, may I ask, who presume to do all this?'

'That's as it may be. We are occasionally Guizot, Thiers, Prévot Paradol,
Lytton, Disraeli, or Joe Atlee.'

'Modest, at all events.'

'And why not say what I feel--not what I have done, but what is in me to
do? Can't you understand this: it would never occur to me that I could
vault over a five-bar gate if I had been born a cripple? but the conscious
possession of a little pliant muscularity might well tempt me to try it.'

'And get a cropper for your pains.'

'Be it so. Better the cropper than pass one's life looking over the top
rail and envying the fellow that had cleared it; but what's this? here's a
letter here: it got in amongst the newspapers. I say, Dick, do you stand
this sort of thing?' said he, as he read the address.