Mr. Smith is a person
who knows when to be silent. Still, undoubtedly it gave cause for
thought to one individual--namely, to him to whom it happened. Indeed,
James Ebenezer Smith is still thinking over it, thinking very hard
indeed.
J. E. Smith was well born and well educated. When he was a good-looking
and able young man at college, but before he had taken his degree,
trouble came to him, the particulars of which do not matter, and he was
thrown penniless, also friendless, upon the rocky bosom of the world.
No, not quite friendless, for he had a godfather, a gentleman connected
with business whose Christian name was Ebenezer. To him, as a last
resource, Smith went, feeling that Ebenezer owed him something in return
for the awful appellation wherewith he had been endowed in baptism.
To a certain extent Ebenezer recognised the obligation. He did nothing
heroic, but he found his godson a clerkship in a bank of which he was
one of the directors--a modest clerkship, no more. Also, when he died a
year later, he left him a hundred pounds to be spent upon some souvenir.
Smith, being of a practical turn of mind, instead of adorning himself
with memorial jewellery for which he had no use, invested the hundred
pounds in an exceedingly promising speculation.
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