That was _my_ luck, let me tell you, when I first thought of trying the law.

Poverty, indeed! Do you shake in your shoes, Mr.Artist, when you think what you were at twenty?
I do, I can promise you." He began to shift about so irritably in his chair, that, in the interests of my work, I was obliged to make an effort to calm him.
"It must be a pleasant occupation for you in your present prosperity," said I, "to look back sometimes at the gradual processes by which you passed from poverty to competence, and from that to the wealth you now enjoy." "Gradual, did you say ?" cried Mr.Boxsious; "it wasn't gradual at all.

I was sharp--damned sharp, and I jumped at my first start in business slap into five hundred pounds in one day." "That was an extraordinary step in advance," I rejoined.

"I suppose you contrived to make some profitable investment--" "Not a bit of it! I hadn't a spare sixpence to invest with.

I won the money by my brains, my hands, and my pluck; and, what's more, I'm proud of having done it.