If he is able, in God's name let him buy a carriage for himself if nothing less will content him. By the time he has done so, he will have conjugated all the moods and tenses connected with its possession, and may, perhaps, go on safely to the end; otherwise he is very apt to loll back with legs outstretched and arms crossed on his way to that place the name of which on earth is, beggary.
Was it the fault of Forde that he was placed in a square hole, he being essentially fitted to fill a round one; that he, being poor, should have visions of opulence thrust upon him; that he, being in a very settled and respectable and useful rank of society, should, nolens volens, have visions of a far different rank presented to him.
I think not. A man is scarcely responsible for his weakness and his folly.
The credulity of those who believed in Forde, may be open to wonder; that Forde failed to verify their belief, seems to me the most natural thing in the world.
If a country squire, accustomed to horses and their vagaries, accustomed likewise to stiff fences, broad watercourses, and awkward bullfinches, mounted a cockney, who says he can ride, on a hunter acquainted with his business, would he be surprised to see that cockney carried home crippled or dead.
Certainly, he would not; and why in business a man who has hitherto only ambled along on the back of a spiritless old cob, should be considered fit to control a thoroughbred passes my comprehension.
When Forde accepted the situation offered to him, he undertook a task too great for his abilities. It was a repetition of the old fable of the ox and the frog, and with a like ending; the frog burst his skin.
Into the offices of the General Chemical Company, Limited, Mr. Forde walked, determined to do his duty and push the concern.
He saw at a glance where others had failed; it does not require long sight for this operation. Naturally, he was tolerant of their errors, since to those errors he owed his own preferment; and he meant, so he declared, to send up the dividend to something which should astonish the shareholders. It is only just to state he at first performed this feat; as a true chronicler, it saddens me to add, that eventually he brought down the shares to something which astonished them still more.
Mr. Forde caught at any and all business which offered. At first he believed in the legitimacy of many schemes with which the General Chemical Company was connected; when enlightenment came he had to make the illegitimate children pass muster by some means; and so at length—the downward descent is one neither pleasant nor profitable to follow—step by step the General Chemical Company, Limited, became a sort of refuge for the destitute—a place where rogues and vagabonds did congregate to transact very suspicious business; a concern with which voluntarily no solvent man dealt; which was in a fair way of becoming in the City a by-word and a reproach.