Nicholas Nickleby

ntleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in lifethat he must get married, and not being young enough or richenough to aspir

and some five after hiswife, he was enabled to leave, to his eldest son, Ralph, threethousand pounds in cash, and to his youngest son, Nicholas, onethousand and the farm, which was as small a landed estate as onewould desire to see.　　These two brothers had been brought up together in a school atExeter; and, being accustomed to go home once a week, had oftenheard, from their mother’s lips, long accounts of their father’ssufferings in his days of poverty, and of their deceased uncle’simportance in his days of affluence: which recitals produced a verydifferent impression on the two: for, while the younger, who was ofa timid and retiring disposition, gleaned from thence nothing butforewarnings to shun the great world and attach himself to thequiet routine of a country life, Ralph, the elder, deduced from theoften-repeated tale the two great morals that riches are the only true source of happiness and power, and that it is lawful and justto compass their acquisition by all means short of felony. ‘And,’　　reasoned Ralph with himself, ‘if no good came of my uncle’smoney when he was alive, a great deal of good came of it after hewas dead, inasmuch as my father has got it now, and is saving it upfor me, which is a highly virtuous purpose; and, going back to theold gentleman, good did come of it to him too, for he had thepleasure of thinking of it all his life long, and of being envied andcourted by all his family besides.’ And Ralph always wound upthese mental soliloquies by arriving at the conclusion, that therewas nothing like money.　　Not confining himself to theory, or permitting his faculties torust, even at that early age, in mere abstract speculations, thispromising lad commenced usurer on a limited scale at school;putting out at good interest a small capital of slate-pencil andmarbles, and gradually extending his operations until they aspiredto the copper coinage of this realm, in which he speculated toconsiderable advantage. Nor did he trouble his borrowers withabstract calculations of figures, or references to ready-reckoners;his simple rule of interest being all comprised in the one goldensentence, ‘two-pence for every half-penny,’ which greatlysimplified the accounts, and which, as a familiar precept, moreeasily acquired and retained in the memory than any known ruleof arithmetic, cannot be too strongly recommended to the notice ofcapitalists, both large and small, and more especially of money-brokers and bill-discounters. Indeed, to do these gentlemenjustice, many of them are to this day in the frequent habit ofadopting it, with eminent success.　　In like manner, did young Ralph Nickleby avoid all those minute and intricate calculations of odd days, which nobody whohas worked sums in simple-interest can fail to have found mostembarrassing, by establishing the one general rule that all sums ofprincipal and interest should be paid on pocket-money day, that isto say, on Saturday: and that whether a loan were contracted onthe Monday, or on the Friday, the amount of interest should be, inboth cases, the same. Indeed he argued, and with great show ofreason, that it ought to be rather more for one day than for five,inasmuch as the borrower might in the former case be very fairlypresumed to be in great extremity, otherwise he would not borrowat all with such odds against him. This fact is interesting, asillustrating the secret connection and sympathy which alwaysexist between great minds. Though Master Ralph Nickleby wasnot at that time aware of it, the class of gentlemen before alludedto, proceed on just the same principle in all their transactions.　　From what we have said of this young gentleman, and thenatural admiration the reader will immediately conceive of hischaracter, it may perhaps be inferred that