‘Mr. Blake,’ he began, ‘what do you think I ought to be?’
‘How can I tell, Alec?’ I answered; ‘what would you like to be?’
‘That’s just what I don’t know,’ said the lad gloomily. ‘I don’t know what I am fit for, or whether I am fit for anything. How can I tell, before I have seen anything of the world, what part I should try to play in it?’
‘You have no strong taste in any direction?’
‘No; I can’t say that I have. I like the country, but I am sick of the loneliness of my life here. I long to be out in the world, to be up and doing something, I hardly know what. You see, I know so little. What I should like is to go to college for the next three or four years—to Glasgow, or Edinburgh—and by that time I would have an idea what I could do, and what I should not attempt.’
‘But do you think,’ I said, with some hesitation, ‘that you are ready to go to college?’
‘Why not? Don’t you think I am old enough? I am almost nineteen. I dare say you think I am too ignorant; but there are junior classes for beginners. I can do Virgil and Cicero, and I think I could manage Xenophon and Homer.’
‘What is the difficulty then?’
‘My father thinks it would be wasting money to send me to college, unless I were to be a minister or a doctor, and I don’t want to be either the one or the other.’
‘But you must be something, you know.’