est of
which, it strikes him, would be very convenient just now to keep him.
But unfortunately the principal is gone and Jack isn't.

Now suppose--for one may suppose anything, however ridiculous--he had
spent two or three hundred pounds at the very most, and brought him up
to the Calling of Literature. He believes, perhaps, that it is only
geniuses that succeed in it (in which case I know more geniuses than I
had any idea of), and he doesn't think Jack a genius, though Jack's
mother does. Or, as is more probable, he regards it as a hand-to-mouth
calling, which to-day gives its disciples a five-pound note, and
to-morrow five pence. He calls to mind a saying about Literature being a
good stick, but not a good crutch--an excellent auxiliary, but no
permanent support; but he forgets the all-important fact that the remark
was made half a century ago.

Poor blind Paterfamilias--shall I couch you? If the operation is
successful, I am sure you will thank me for it; but, on the other hand,
I foresee I shall incur the greatest enmities. Should I encourage clever
Jack, and, what is worse, a thousand Jacks who are not clever, to enter
upon this vocation, what will editors say to me? I shall have to go
about, perhaps, guarded with two policemen with revolvers, like an Irish
gentleman on his landed estate. 'Is not the flood of rubbish to which we
are already subjected,' I hear them crying, 'bad enough, without your
pulling up the sluices of universal stupidity?' My suggestion, however,
is intended to benefit them by clearing away the rubbish, and inducing a
clearer and deeper stream for the turning of their mills. At the same
time I confess that the lessening of Paterfamilias's difficulties is my
main object. What I would open his eyes to is the fact that a calling,
of the advantages of which he has no knowledge, _does_ present itself to
clever Jack, which will cost him nothing but pens, ink, and paper to
enter upon, and in which, if he has been well trained for it, he will
surely be successful, since so many succeed in it without any training
at all. Why should not clever Jack have this in view as much as the
_ignes fatui_ of woolsacks and mitres? If it has no lord
chancellorships, it has plenty of county court appointments; if it has
no bishoprics, it has plenty of benefices--and really, as times go, some
pretty fat ones.

On your breakfast-table, good Paterfamilias, there lies, every morning,
a newspaper, and on Saturday perha