“I have the offer of a professorship at Leipzig, but that’s out of the question now.”
“Why?”
“It would give me only two thousand a year at first, and the interest on the debt will be over six thousand annually.”
“What do you know?” he questioned.
“Most of the languages and dialects of Europe and Asia, and a good deal of history and ethnology. I am fairly read in arts, sciences, and religions, and I know something of writing,” I answered, smiling at the absurdity of mentioning such knowledge in the face of such a condition.
“Humph! And you’d have sold all that for two thousand a year?”
“I think so.”
“Well, that only proves that a man had better cultivate his gumption, and not his brains!”
“If he wishes to make money,” I could not help retorting gently.
“You’re just like Maizie!” he sniffed, and his going back to your familiar name in my presence was the best compliment he could have paid me. “You two ought to have died young and gone to heaven, where there’s nothing to do but cultivate the soul.”