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The million pound banknote

Then came the climaxing stroke - the accolade, so to speak - which in a single instant transmuted the perishable dross of notoriety into the enduring gold of fame - Punch caricatured me! Yes, I was a made man now; my place was established. I might be joked about still, but reverently, not hilariously, not rudely; I could be smiled at, but not laughed at. The time for that had gone by. Punch pictured me dressed in rags, dickering with a Beefeater for the Tower of London. Well, you can imagine how it was with a young fellow who had never been taken notice of before, and now all of a sudden couldn't say a thing that wasn't taken up and repeated everywhere.