He
understood quite sufficiently the advantages of wealth, and was
prepared to go considerable lengths for the sake of enjoying them,
but his character lacked persistence. This defect explained the
rogueries and calamities of his life. He had brains in abundance,
and a somewhat better education would have made of him either a
successful honest man or a rascal of superior scope--it is always
a toss-up between these two results where a character such as his is
in question. Ever since he abandoned the craft to which his father
had had him trained, he had lived on his wits; there would be matter
for a volume in the history of his experiences at home and abroad, a
volume infinitely more valuable considered as a treatise on modern
civilisation than any professed work on that subject in existence.
With one episode only in his past can we here concern ourselves; the
retrospect is needful to make clear his relations with Mr.
Scawthorne.
On his return from America, Joseph possessed a matter of a hundred
pounds; the money was not quite legally earned (pray let us reserve
the word honesty for a truer use than the common one), and on the
whole he preferred to recommence life in the old country under a
pseudonym--that little affair of the desertion of his child would
perhaps, in any case, have made this advisable.
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