There was ebb and tide to his fortunes but he hung on.

A lighting contract made him a rich man.

Then he drifted into politics; and now, at the age of fifty, he was a power in the state.

The one phase of sentiment in the man was the longing to possess all those obstacles that had beset his path in the days of his struggles.

He bought the canal-boat and converted it into a house-boat; he broke the man who had refused him a job at the start; he bought the block, the sidewalk of which he had swept; every man who stood in his way he removed this way or that.