llows can make hundreds a week by a short
speech, or a few strokes of the pen, that cost them no labour and little
forethought, whilst I, with all my hard work, can make nothing! What
uphill work it is! Not that the Bar is not a fine profession; quite the
finest there is," for not even to himself would Herbert Pryme decry the
legal muse whom he worshipped; "but, I suppose, like every other
profession, it is overstocked; there are too many struggling for the same
prizes. The fact is, that England is over-populated. Now, if a law were
to be passed compelling one-half of the adult males in this country to
remain in a state of celibacy for the space of fifteen years----" but
here he stopped short in his soliloquy and smiled; for was not the one
desire of his life at present to marry Beatrice Miller immediately? And
how was the extra population to be stayed if every one of the doomed
quota of marriageable males were of the same mind as himself?

Presently Mr. Pryme sauntered idly to the window, and stood looking
drearily out of it, still whistling, of course.

The prospect was not a lively one. His chambers looked out upon a little
square, stone-flagged court, with a melancholy-looking pump in the centre
of it. There was an arched passage leading away to one side, down which a
distant footstep echoed drearily now and then, and a side glimpse of the
empty road at the other end, beyond the corner of the opposite houses.
Now and then some member of the learned profession passed rapidly across
the small open space with the pre-occupied air of a man who has not a
minute to spare, or a clerk, bearing the official red bag, ran hastily
along the passage; for the rest, the London sparrows had it pretty much
to themselves. As things were, Mr. Pryme envied the sparrows, who were
ready clothed by Providence, and had no rates and taxes to pay, as well
as the clerks, who, at all events, had plenty to do and no time to
soliloquize upon the hardness and hollowness of life. To have plenty of
brains, and an indefinite amount of spare time to use them in; to desire
ardently to hasten along the road towards fortune and happiness, and to
be forced to sit idly by whilst others, duller-witted, perchance, and
with less capacity for work, are amassing wealth under your very
nose--when this is achieved by sheer luck, or good interest, or any other
of those inadequate causes which get people on in life independent of
talent and industry--that is what