This I have for over forty years used sparingly as regards my personal needs, daringly with regard to speculative investments.

With the latter I took such very great care, studying the conditions surrounding them so thoroughly, that even now my schedule of bad debts or unsuccessful investments is almost a blank.

Perhaps by such means things flourished with me, and wealth piled in so fast that at times I could hardly use it to advantage.

This was all done as the forerunner of ambition, but I was over fifty years of age when the horizon of ambition itself opened up to me.

I speak thus freely, my dear Rupert, as when you read it I shall have passed away, and not ambition nor the fear of misunderstanding, nor even of scorn can touch me.