If he has the stuff in him to earn a competence at forty, he has usually acquired the judgment and experience to keep it after he is forty.
"Dollars and Sense"
Col. Wm. C. Hunter
He will never see twenty-five again, and he is not very rich; but he has a competence and an honorable position in society.
"Monsieur Cherami"
Charles Paul de Kock
We had no doctor, and his illness was beyond our competence.
"My Home In The Field of Honor"
Frances Wilson Huard