got a
precious one.'

'It was forced upon me,' said Mortimer, 'because it was understood that
we wanted a solicitor in the family. And we have got a precious one.'

'There are four of us, with our names painted on a door-post in right of
one black hole called a set of chambers,' said Eugene; 'and each of us
has the fourth of a clerk--Cassim Baba, in the robber's cave--and Cassim
is the only respectable member of the party.'

'I am one by myself, one,' said Mortimer, 'high up an awful staircase
commanding a burial-ground, and I have a whole clerk to myself, and he
has nothing to do but look at the burial-ground, and what he will turn
out when arrived at maturity, I cannot conceive. Whether, in that shabby
rook's nest, he is always plotting wisdom, or plotting murder; whether
he will grow up, after so much solitary brooding, to enlighten his
fellow-creatures, or to poison them; is the only speck of interest that
presents itself to my professional view. Will you give me a light? Thank
you.'

'Then idiots talk,' said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking
with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, 'of Energy.
If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that
I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such
parrot gabble! What the deuce! Am I to rush out into the street, collar
the first man of a wealthy appearance that I meet, shake him, and say,
"Go to law upon the spot, you dog, and retain me, or I'll be the death
of you"? Yet that would be energy.'

'Precisely my view of the case, Eugene. But show me a good opportunity,
show me something really worth being energetic about, and I'll show you
energy.'

'And so will I,' said Eugene.

And it is likely enough that ten thousand other young men, within the
limits of the London Post-office town delivery, made the same hopeful
remark in the course of the same evening.

The wheels rolled on, and rolled down by the Monument and by the Tower,
and by the Docks; down by Ratcliffe, and by Rotherhithe; down by where
accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher grounds,
like so much moral sewage, and to be pausing until its own weight forced
it over the bank and sunk it in the river. In and out among vessels
that seemed to have got ashore, and houses that seemed to have got
afloat--among bow-splits staring into windows, and windows staring
into ships--the wheels rolled on, until they stopped