QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
What is a Lawyer?—A lawyer is a man with a pale face and sunken eyes; he passes much time in two small rooms in one of the inns of court; he is surrounded with sheets of foolscap folio paper, tied up with a red string; he has more books than one could read in a year, or comprehend in seven; he walks slowly, speaks hesitatingly, and receives fees from those who visit him, for giving "hypothetical answers" to "specious questions."
What is a Doctor?—A doctor, videlicit an M.D., is a sedate-looking personage; he listens calmly to the story of your ailments; if your eye and skin be yellow, he shrewdly remarks that you have the jaundice; he feels your pulse, writes two or three unintelligible lines of Latin, for which you pay him a guinea; he keeps a chariot, and one man-servant. The standard board behind, intended for a footman, is fearfully beset with spikes, to prevent little boys from riding at the doctor's expense. He ingeniously lets himself in and out of his vehicle, by means of a strap attached to the steps, so contrived, that when in, he can dexterously cause the steps to follow. His servant is a coachman abroad, and a footman, valet, and butler at home.
What is an Author?—He is a man who weaves words into sentences; he dissects the works of his predecessors and contemporaries, and ingeniously dovetails the pieces together again, so that their real owners can scarcely recognise them. He is furnished with a pair of scissors and a pot of paste. He frequents the Chapter Coffee-house by day, and the Cider-Cellar by night. He ruralises at Hampstead or Holloway, and perhaps once a year steams it to Margate. He talks largely, and forms the nucleus of a knot of acquaintances, who look up to him as an oracle. He is always going to set about some work of great importance; he writes a page, becomes out of humour with the subject, and begins another, which shares the same fate. His coat is something the worse for wear; his wife is the only person in the world who is blind to his transcendant abilities; and he has too much to do in cultivating his own genius, to descend to the minutias of his children's education.