“I 'll engage to satisfy you on that head. You need but read the names of those of our own countrymen who adopt it, to be convinced that it is a high and a holy cause. I don't suppose you have studied very deeply that great issue which our century is about to try,—the cause of order versus anarchy,—the right to rule of the good, the virtuous, and the enlightened, against the tyranny of the unlettered, the degraded, and the base.”
“I know nothing about it.”
“Well, I 'll tax your patience some day to listen to it all from me; for the present what say you to my plan?”
“I rather like it. If it had only come last week, I don't think I could have refused it.”
“And why last week?”
“Because I have got a promise of an appointment since that”
“Of what nature,—a commission in the army?”
“No,” said he, shaking his head.
“They 're not going to make a clerk of a fellow like you, I trust?”
“They 'd be sorely disappointed if they did.”