"Nothing is more common than for an artist who has set out on his journey on a high-stepping horse to find himself all of a sudden dismounted and invited to go his way on foot.

You can number them by the thousand--the people of two or three successes; the poor fellows whose candle burnt out in a night.

Some of them groped their way along without it, some of them gave themselves up for blind and sat down by the wayside to beg.

Who shall say that I 'm not one of these?
Who shall assure me that my credit is for an unlimited sum?
Nothing proves it, and I never claimed it; or if I did, I did so in the mere boyish joy of shaking off the dust of Northampton.

If you believed so, my dear fellow, you did so at your own risk! What am I, what are the best of us, but an experiment?
Do I succeed--do I fail?
It does n't depend on me.