TOO CLEVER BY HALF.
(Being Questions and Answers Cut on the Straight.)
Question. So you have finished your education?
Answer. Yes, thanks to the liberality of the School Board.
Q. Do you know more than your parents?
A. Certainly, as my father was a sweep, and my mother a charwoman.
Q. Would either occupation suit you?
A. Certainly not; my aspirations soar above such pursuits, and my health, impaired by excessive study, unfits me for a life of manual labour.
Q. Kindly tell me what occupation would suit you?
A. I think I could, with a little cramming, pass the examinations for the Army, the Navy, or the Bar.
Q. Then why not become an officer in either branch of the United Service, or a Member of one of the Inns of Court?
A. Because I fear that as a man of neither birth nor breeding, I should be regarded with contempt in either the Camp or the Forum.
Q. Would you take a clerkship in the City?
A. Not willingly, as I have enjoyed something better than a commercial education, besides City clerkships are not to be had for the asking.
Q. Well, would you become a shop-boy or a counter-jumper?
A. Certainly not; I should deem it a sin to waste my accomplishments (which are many) in filling a situation suggestive of the servants' hall, rather than of the library.
Q. Well then, how are you to make an honest livelihood?
A. Those who are responsible for my education must answer that question.
Q. And if they can't?
A. Then I must accept an alternative, and seek inspiration and precedents from the records of success in another walk of life, beginning with the pages of the Newgate Calendar!