Victorian England - Articles and Stories

THE RACE FOR WEALTH. CHAPTER III.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "GEORGE GEITH," "MAXWELL DREWITT," &c.

CHAPTER III.

AT HOME.

Takes as a whole, Mr. Perkins' career had not been an astonishingly prosperous one. He had not done ill — but neither, on the other hand, had he done well.

Success is comparative, consequently men's views of it are different. Some are satisfied with a very small measure, others deem their object still unattained even when the bushel is full and miming over.

Success to one is a living of five hundred a year, with a pretty church to preach in, pleasant society near at hand, no poor, and a good house; to another, it is a fair salary, a semi-detached villa, a strip of garden containing a piece of grass about the size of a table cloth, a piano purchased by instalments in the front parlour, a suite of walnut-wood furniture covered with green rep, a dining-table, a set of spirit-decanters, and a cruet-frame, with various other articles too numerous to mention dispersed about the suburban mansion.

To a third, success is compassed when he has got his sons out in the world, and his daughters married or engaged. Up to that point there may have been a struggle, but for the future he sees his way plain, and binds the laurels of victory round his brow; while to a fourth nothing short of a title seems satisfactory, nothing under a patent of nobility worth striving for.

Success is what we make it for ourselves. The result of the social game, whether gain or loss, must depend, not on the opinions of others, but upon the magnitude of the stake that we have placed upon the board; and, therefore, when I say that Mr. Perkins' prosperity had been of the most moderate description, it must be borne in mind that I am gauging his condition by the ordinary conventional standard, rather than speaking of it as Mr. Perkins will be heard in due time to speak himself.

According to his own idea, he stood before the world a living example of the comfortable position any individual willing to work hard may achieve without the assistance of a large money capital to start with. Lawrence Barbour's notion was, however, widely different to this. Mr. Perkins became in due time a living example to him of how long a manmay walk through existence without making anything of his opportunities; and, allowing for the over-hopefulness of youth, for its impatience at delay, for its proneness to ignore the possibility either of failure or obstacle, Lawrence's view of the matter was sensible enough. There can be no doubt that, had not Mr. Perkins been so easily contented his success would have been greater; but then, he might not have felt so happy. So there are two sides to that question also.

He had worked hard, — like a horse in a mill, he was wont to declare, when he talked about himself, a calamity of not infrequent occurrence. He had not been extravagant, he had not been ostentatious, he had not squandered his earnings; and yet, supposing Josiah Perkins had died, his estate would not have yielded five thousand pounds net. Is this success ? Mr. Perkins thought so, and was a very well-contented man; who never had any qualms of conscience as to the honesty of the trade in which he had embarked; who never, or at least rarely, regretted having left the more legitimate branches of his profession in order to engage in others which were, to use a mild term, questionable.

As the world goes, Josiah Perkins was a just and an honest man, and yet his trade was a lie, his business a delusion, every article he sent out of his yard a sham. Never a better fellow breathed than the manufacturing chemist: he stood by his friends, he loved his wife and children, he never forsook the people he employed when sickness or death entered their doors; but still, as I have said, his mode of earning money was not strictly legitimate, for Mr. Perkins was less a manufacturing chemist than a manufacturing grocer.