tter
proper consideration, they would have given me leave to follow my own
inclinations, and I would have been a physician--a profession in which
quackery is of still greater avail than in the legal business. I never
became either a physician or an advocate, and I never would apply to a
lawyer, when I had any legal business, nor call in a physician when I
happened to be ill. Lawsuits and pettifoggery may support a good many
families, but a greater proportion is ruined by them, and those who
perish in the hands, of physicians are more numerous by far than those
who get cured strong evidence in my opinion, that mankind would be much
less miserable without either lawyers or doctors.

To attend the lectures of the professors, I had to go to the university
called the Bo, and it became necessary for me to go out alone. This was a
matter of great wonder to me, for until then I had never considered
myself a free man; and in my wish to enjoy fully the liberty I thought I
had just conquered, it was not long before I had made the very worst
acquaintances amongst the most renowned students. As a matter of course,
the most renowned were the most worthless, dissolute fellows, gamblers,
frequenters of disorderly houses, hard drinkers, debauchees, tormentors
and suborners of honest girls, liars, and wholly incapable of any good or
virtuous feeling. In the company of such men did I begin my
apprenticeship of the world, learning my lesson from the book of
experience.

The theory of morals and its usefulness through the life of man can be
compared to the advantage derived by running over the index of a book
before reading it when we have perused that index we know nothing but the
subject of the work. This is like the school for morals offered by the
sermons, the precepts, and the tales which our instructors recite for our
especial benefit. We lend our whole attention to those lessons, but when
an opportunity offers of profiting by the advice thus bestowed upon us,
we feel inclined to ascertain for ourselves whether the result will turn
out as predicted; we give way to that very natural inclination, and
punishment speedily follows with concomitant repentance. Our only
consolation lies in the fact that in such moments we are conscious of our
own knowledge, and consider ourselves as having earned the right to
instruct others; but those to whom we wish to impart our experience act
exactly as we have acted before them, and, as a matter of cou