My parents and grand-parents had lived in the same way, and I expected that my descendants, if I had any, would enjoy a like easy existence.
But how could I live without service to the world?
you ask.

Why should the world have supported in utter idleness one who was able to render service?
The answer is that my great-grandfather had accumulated a sum of money on which his descendants had ever since lived.

The sum, you will naturally infer, must have been very large not to have been exhausted in supporting three generations in idleness.

This, however, was not the fact.

The sum had been originally by no means large.