“To wit?” inquired Mark, much amused with his young mentor.
“First, then, you should have a natural vocation for teaching, and consequently the love of it, which you have not; a great deal of affection for children, which you have not; much patience, perseverance, firmness, social humility, some of which qualities you have, and others you have not.”
“I am tempted to ask you to specify which I have and which I have not, but I will not.”
“I thought you were going to open a glorious career for yourself, and achieve a great name.”
“In what manner?”
“I thought you were going to be a statesman.”
“A lawyer, child.”
“Why are you here, then, Mr. Sutherland? Why are you not a lawyer?”
“Rosalie, I made an effort, many an effort, to get admitted to practice, at the bar of S——. I had thought myself well qualified, for I had studied legal science with what you call an attraction—a vocation for the profession. For several years past I had read law con amore; yet, through the want of familiarity with the technicalities of practice, I failed to get admitted as a practitioner before the court.”
“Then I would have gone into some lawyer’s office, and assisted him as a copyist for nothing, until I had acquired an intimacy with those crabbed technicalities. It seems to me such a very trivial matter for an impediment. Why, there is your uncle, who is no lawyer, but who can draw up a right legal and binding document, with as many ‘whereases’ and ‘aforesaids’ as ever made a composition unintelligible.”