re open to him?"

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, as far as I know, if he hasn't capital he can emigrate. That is
what numbers of fellows do. If he has interest, he can get a commission
in the militia, and from that possibly into the line; or he can enlist
as a private, for the same object. There is a third alternative, he can
hang himself. Of course, if he happens to have a relation in the city
he can get a clerkship; but that alternative, I should say, is worse
than the third."

"But I suppose he might be a doctor, a clergyman, or a lawyer?"

"I don't know much about those matters, but I do know that it takes
about five years' grinding, and what is called 'walking the hospitals,'
that is, going round the wards with the surgeons, before one is
licensed to kill. I think, but I am not sure, that three years at the
bar would admit you to practice, and usually another seven or eight
years are spent, before you earn a penny. As for the Church, you have
to go through the university, or one of the places we call training
colleges; and when, at last, you are ordained, you may reckon, unless
you have great family interest, on remaining a curate, with perhaps one
hundred or one hundred and fifty pounds per annum, for eighteen or
twenty years."

"And no amount of energy will enable a man of, say, four-and-twenty,
without a profession, to obtain a post on which he could live with some
degree of comfort?"

"I don't think energy would have anything to do with it. You cannot
drop into a merchant's office and say, 'I want a snug berth, out in
China;' or 'I should like an agency, in Mesopotamia.' If you have luck,
anything is possible. If you haven't luck, you ought to fall back on my
three alternatives--emigrate, enlist, or hang yourself. Of course, you
can sponge on your friends for a year or two, if you are mean enough to
do so; but there is an end to that sort of thing, in time.

"May I ask why you put the question, Hilliard? You have really a
splendid opening, here. You are surely not going to be foolish enough
to chuck it, with the idea of returning to England, and taking anything
that may turn up?"

"No, I am not so foolish as that. I have had, as you say,
luck--extraordinary luck--and I have quite made up my mind to stay in
the service. No, I am really asking you because I know so little of
England that I wondered how men who had a fair education, but no family
interest, did get on."

"They very rarely do