Explore "His Character" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A certain merchant in the City of London, having retired from business, purchased for himself a private house upon the heights of Hampstead and proposed to devote his remaining years to the education and the establishment in life of his only son.
When this youth (whose name was George) had arrived at the age of nineteen his father spoke to him after dinner upon his birthday with regard to the necessity of choosing a profession. He pointed out to him the advantages of a commercial career, and notably of that form of useful industry which is known as banking, showing how in that trade a profit was to be made by lending the money of one man to another, and often of a man's own money to himself, without engaging one's own savings or fortune.