f great pieces in the
background. I would not have a man marry above his level, so as to
become the appendage of a powerful family-connection; but I would not
have him marry until he knew his level,--that is, again, looking at the
matter in a purely worldly point of view, and not taking the sentiments
at all into consideration. But remember, that a young man, using large
endowments wisely and fortunately, may put himself on a level with the
highest in the land in ten brilliant years of spirited, unflagging labor.
And to stand at the very top of your calling in a great city is something
in itself,--that is, if you like money, and influence, and a seat on the
platform at public lectures, and gratuitous tickets to all sorts of
places where you don't want to go, and, what is a good deal better than
any of these things, a sense of power, limited, it may be, but absolute
in its range, so that all the Caesars and Napoleons would have to stand
aside, if they came between you and the exercise of your special
vocation.

That is what I thought this young fellow might have come to; and now I
have let him go off into the country with my certificate, that he is fit
to teach in a school for either sex! Ten to one he will run like a moth
into a candle, right into one of those girls'-nests, and get tangled up
in some sentimental folly or other, and there will be the end of him.
Oh, yes! country doctor,--half a dollar a visit,--drive, drive, drive
all day,--get up at night and harness your own horse,--drive again ten
miles in a snow-storm, shake powders out of two phials, (pulv.
glycyrrhiz., pulv. gum. acac. as partes equates,)--drive back again,
if you don't happen to get stuck in a drift, no home, no peace, no
continuous meals, no unbroken sleep, no Sunday, no holiday, no social
intercourse, but one eternal jog, jog, jog, in a sulky, until you feel
like the mummy of an Indian who had been buried in the sitting posture,
and was dug up a hundred years afterwards! Why did n't I warn him about
love and all that nonsense? Why didn't I tell him he had nothing to do
with it, yet awhile? Why did n't I hold up to him those awful examples I
could have cited, where poor young fellows who could just keep themselves
afloat have hung a matrimonial millstone round their necks, taking it for
a life-preserver? All this of two words in a certificate!

CHAPTER III.

MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND.

Whether the Student advertised for a scho