Mr. Tinman, however, this high-stepping person in question, happened to
have come of a marketing mother. She had started him from a small shop to
a big one. He, by the practice of her virtues, had been enabled to start
himself as a gentleman. He was a man of this ambition, and prouder behind
it. But having started himself precipitately, he took rank among
independent incomes, as they are called, only to take fright at the
perils of starvation besetting one who has been tempted to abandon the
source of fifty per cent. So, if noble imagery were allowable in our time
in prose, might alarms and partial regrets be assumed to animate the
splendid pumpkin cut loose from the suckers. Deprived of that prodigious
nourishment of the shop in the fashionable seaport of Helmstone, he
retired upon his native town, the Cinque Port of Crikswich, where he
rented the cheapest residence he could discover for his habitation, the
House on the Beach, and lived imposingly, though not in total disaccord
with his old mother's principles.
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