"Oh," said I, ingenuously, "every thing here amuses me; the lights, the shops, the crowd; but, then, to me every thing is new."
The youth came from his lounging-place and moved on, as if inviting me to walk; while he answered, rather with bitter sullenness, than the melancholy his words expressed—
"One thing, at least, cannot be new to you; it is an old truth with us before we leave the nursery—'Whatever is worth having must be bought; ergo, he who cannot buy, has nothing worth having.'"
"I don't think," said I, wisely, "that the things best worth having can be bought at all. You see that poor dropsical jeweller standing before his shop-door,—his shop is the finest in the street,—and I dare say he would be very glad to give it to you or me in return for our good health and strong legs. Oh no! I think with my father—'All that are worth having are given to all;—that is, nature and labour.'"
"Your father says that; and you go by what your father says! Of course, all fathers have preached that, and many other good doctrines, since Adam preached to Cain; but I don't see that the fathers have found their sons very credulous listeners."
"So much the worse for the sons," said I bluntly.
"Nature," continued my new acquaintance, without attending to my ejaculation—"nature indeed does give us much, and nature also orders each of us how to use her gifts. If nature gave you the propensity to drudge, you will drudge; if she gives me the ambition to rise, and the contempt for work, I may rise—but I certainly shall not work."
"Oh," said I, "you agree with Squills, I suppose, and fancy we are all guided by the bumps on our foreheads?"
"And the blood in our veins, and our mother's milk. We inherit other things besides gout and consumption. So you always do as your father tells you! Good boy!"