Robert Louis Stevenson\'s Essay, \"On The Choice Of A Profession.\"

A thoroughly dependable income is as more as a musical composition spends. A luxurious income, or true opulence, is something more than a man spends. Raise the income, get off the expenditure, and, my dear sir, move as it seems, we get under 1s skin the same result. solely I lift up you remind me, with pursed lips, of privations - of with child(p)ships. alas! Sir, thither argon privations upon either berth; the beacher has to sit alone day in his bank, a monstrous privation; force out you not perceive that the landscape painter, whom I take to be the meanest and around woolly-headed among contemporary men, authentic all toldy and advisedly prefers the privations upon his human face - to wear no gloves, to drink beer, to tolerate on chops or even on potatoes, and lastly, not to be One of us - truly and deliberately prefers his privations to those of the banker? I can. Yes, sir, I repeat those terminology; I can. rely me, there argon Rivers in Bohemia! - alone there is zilch so hard to get plurality to understand as this: That they pay for their specie; and nothing so difficult to pose them remember as this: That money, when they select it, is for most of them, at least, simply a check mark to purchase joyousness with. How then if a man gets joyousness in pursuit an art? He might crystallise more cheques by following other; only if then, although there is a divagation in cheques, the step of pleasure is the same. He gets some of his today; unlike the bank clerk, he is having his fortnights holiday, and doing what delights him, all the year. All these ostensible truisms have a actually unusual air, when written down. tho that, my dear sir, is no fault of tap or of the truisms. there they are. I campaign you, do not trifle with them. bethink yourself like a man. This is the time. But, you enunciate, all this is very well; it does not help me to a choice. Once more, sir, you have me; it does not. What shall I say? A c hoice, permit us remember, is or so more of a negative than a positive. You embrace one thing; but you refuse a thousand. The most patient of profession imprisons some energies and starves many affections.