Stern necessity gave my manhood that prudence which my youth was a stranger to.

I faced danger, I endured fatigue, I sought foreign climates, and proved that I belonged to the nation which is proverbially patient of labour and prodigal of life.

Independence, like liberty to Virgil's shepherd, came late, but came at last, with no great affluence in its train, but bringing enough to support a decent appearance for the rest of my life, and to induce cousins to be civil, and gossips to say, "I wonder whom old Croft will make his heir?
He must have picked up something, and I should not be surprised if it prove more than folk think of." My first impulse when I returned home was to rush to the house of my benefactor, the only man who had in my distress interested himself in my behalf.

He was a snuff-taker, and it had been the pride of my heart to save the IPSA CORPORA of the first score of guineas I could hoard, and to have them converted into as tasteful a snuff-box as Rundell and Bridge could devise.

This I had thrust for security into the breast of my waistcoat, while, impatient to transfer it to the person for whom it was destined, I hastened to his house in Brown Square.