text:  "He said " observed one of his friends at Caen when talking about his altered circumstances "that up to a particular period of his life every thing prospered with him and that he attributed this good luck to the possession of a silver sixpence with a hole in it which somebody had given him some years before with an injunction to take good care of it as every thing would go well with him so long as he kept it and everything the contrary if he happened to lose it