ll. I'm sick--just sick, of seeing men trying
to find something grand enough to do, instead of trying to do the first
thing they can grandly."

"I haven't noticed that men are so set on rising."

"No, not always; but when they're not ambitious enough to get something
fine to do, they're not ambitious enough to do what they do well, unless
it's for the sake of money. Look at the fellows that went to school with
us, half of them shopkeepers' sons. How many of them went in with their
fathers? Just those who were mean enough to care for nothing but
money-making, and those who were too dull to do anything else."

"The education they got was good enough to give them a taste for higher
callings."

"Yes"--with a sneer--"and how the masters gloried over such brilliant
examples as yourself, who felt themselves 'called higher,' so to speak!
You had left school by the time I came to it, but I had your shining
tracks pointed out to me all along the way, and old Thompson told me
that Wolsey's father was 'in the same line as my papa,' and he
instructed me about Kirke White's career; and I, greedy little pig that
I was, sucked it all in till I sickened. I've never been able to feed on
any of that food since."

In a moment the other continued, "Well, in spite of the fact that our
own father was too true and simple ever to be anything but a gentleman,
it remains true that the choice of this trade and others on a level with
it--"

"Such as hunting and shooting, or the cooking of meats that ladies are
encouraged to devote themselves to."

"I was saying--the choice of this trade, or of others on a level with
it, be they whatever they are, implies something coarse in the grain of
the average man who chooses it, and has a coarsening effect upon him."

"If the old novels are any true picture of life, there was a time when
every cleric was a place-hunter. Would you have advised good men to keep
out of the church at that time? I'm told there's hardly an honourable
man in United States politics: is that less reason, or more, for honest
fellows to go into public life there?" (Impatience was waxing again. The
words fell after one another in hot haste.) "There's a time coming when
every man will be taught to like to keep his hands clean and read the
poets; and will you preach to them all then that they mustn't be coarse
enough to do necessary work, or do you imagine it will be well done if
they all do an hour a day at it in amateur fashion?