"Now, my friend, I feel how miserably foolish I have been all my life.
I have thrown away fortune because I despised it. It was too
grovelling a pursuit, too mean a vocation, to make and to hoard money.
In my soul I despised it, and now you see it is revenged; for without
it, I have learned, there is no gratification for ambition--no
independence of a sneering, envious world. A bankrupt is a felon,
though his mind, his virtues, and his attainments may be those of a
god. He is a useless waif upon the world; for all he has, or all he
may be, is, to himself and the world, unavailable without money. I
have discarded all my ambitious aspirations long since, and tried to
reconcile myself to the fact that my life has been and is a failure.
And I am sorry you have come to me to remind me that the aim of my
young life was within my reach, when I have no means to grasp it, and,
now that I am miserable, to show me what I might have been. No, my
friend, I must go on with the drudgery of the law, to earn my bread,
and thus eke out a miserable future. I am grateful to you and my other
friends, who have delegated you to this mission.
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