Mr. Goodchild was admittedly the most successful of merchant princes—not only financially, but morally. From a boy the great trader had advanced on the road of commerce by leaps and bounds. His parents were of humble birth and in poor circumstances, and yet he had risen to the top of the tree of commercial prosperity. Mr. Goodchild had shops, warehouses, wharfs, and a fleet of ships. He had never had a reverse. All he had touched had turned to gold. This is so well understood that a description of his enormous wealth in detail would be entirely superfluous.
"Do you really want to know the secret of my pecuniary triumph?" asked Mr. Goodchild, when he was questioned on the subject.
"Why, certainly," was the reply. "How is it that your companion, the idle apprentice, came to such signal grief?"
"Because he was always reading the worst of literature. He knew the history of every felon recorded in the Newgate Calendar, original edition, and added chapters. That brought my 'colleague as a boy' to such dire disaster."
"And you never perused the pernicious documents?"
"Never. And I can prove my statement to the hilt."
"You never perused them! And why not?"
"Because," returned the prosperous capitalist with a gentle smile, "those in whose hands my future rested had my true interest at heart. I was never taught to read!"
And with this suggestive announcement (well worthy of the attention of ratepayers who can control the expenditure of the School Board) the history of the two apprentices is brought to a conclusion at once pleasing and instructive.