coverer an honest
share of the profits resulting from your speculation? My position in the
world puts ME out of the power of executing the vast plan I have formed,
but 'twill be a certain fortune to him who engages in it; and why should
not I, too, participate in that fortune?"

Such would have been my manner of dealing with the world, too, with
regard to my discovery of the new professions. Does not the world want
new professions? Are there not thousands of well-educated men panting,
struggling, pushing, starving, in the old ones? Grim tenants of
chambers looking out for attorneys who never come?--wretched physicians
practising the stale joke of being called out of church until people no
longer think fit even to laugh or to pity? Are there not hoary-headed
midshipmen, antique ensigns growing mouldy upon fifty years' half-pay?
Nay, are there not men who would pay anything to be employed rather
than remain idle? But such is the glut of professionals, the horrible
cut-throat competition among them, that there is no chance for one in a
thousand, be he ever so willing, or brave, or clever: in the great ocean
of life he makes a few strokes, and puffs, and sputters, and sinks, and
the innumerable waves overwhelm him and he is heard of no more.

Walking to my banker's t'other day--and I pledge my sacred honor this
story is true--I met a young fellow whom I had known attache to an
embassy abroad, a young man of tolerable parts, unwearied patience, with
some fortune too, and, moreover, allied to a noble Whig family, whose
interest had procured him his appointment to the legation at Krahwinkel,
where I knew him. He remained for ten years a diplomatic character;
he was the working-man of the legation; he sent over the most diffuse
translations of the German papers for the use of the Foreign Secretary;
he signed passports with most astonishing ardor; he exiled himself
for ten long years in a wretched German town, dancing attendance at
court-balls and paying no end of money for uniforms. And what for? At
the end of the ten years--during which period of labor he never received
a single shilling from the Government which employed him (rascally
spendthrift of a Government, va!),--he was offered the paid attacheship
to the court of H. M. the King of the Mosquito Islands, and refused that
appointment a week before the Whig Ministry retired. Then he knew that
there was no further chance for him, and incontinently quitted the
diplomatic s