Excerpt from Investing Uncle Ben's Legacy: A Tale of Mining and Matrimonial Speculations Martin had often observed the marvellous elasticity of some of his trading neighbours, who would start up again (soon after a heavy failure) as springy as acrobats, and repeat the down and up again process over and over, until eventually they reached the goal of inde pendence, at the top of their greasy pole. He, perhaps, envied such men their mercantile pluck and push, but he could not imitate them for the life of him. Doubtless he might have found a friend in the large city of Mel bourne who would willingly have helped him on again in a small way, for his reputation was unblemished: but he was too diffident to ask for help, and nobody thought of volunteering it. His excessive harrassment had made him very nervous, and all his energies seemed stagnated through physical weakness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.