The reader will not have thought much of Fisker on his arrival in England. Fisker was, perhaps, not a man worthy of much thought. He had never read a book. He had never written a line worth reading. He had never said a prayer. He cared nothing for humanity. He had sprung out of some Californian gully, was perhaps ignorant of his own father and mother, and had tumbled up in the world on the strength of his own audacity. But, such as he was, he had sufficed to give the necessary impetus for rolling Augustus Melmotte onwards into almost unprecedented commercial greatness. When Mr. Melmotte took his offices in Abchurch Lane, he was undoubtedly a great man, but nothing so great as when the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway had become not only an established fact, but a fact established in Abchurch Lane. The great company indeed had an office of its own, where the Board was held; but everything was really managed in Mr. Melmotte's own commercial sanctum. 
The reader will not have thought much of Fisker on his arrival in England. Fisker was, perhaps, not worthy of much thought. He had never read a book. He had never said a prayer. He cared nothing for humanity. He had sprung out of some Californian gully, and had tumbled up in the world on the strength of his own audacity. But, such as he was, he had given the necessary impetus for rolling Augustus Melmotte onward into almost unprecedented commercial greatness, thanks to the Mexican Railway. The great company had its own office, where the Board was held; but everything was really managed in Mr. Melmotte's offices at Abchurch Lane.
