If you mean to be a great surgeon—-"
"I don't mean to be a surgeon."
"A physician then."
"No, sir. Please don't let my mother fancy I mean to be in practice,
at everyone's beck and call. I've seen too much of that. I mean to
get a professorship, and have time and apparatus for researches, so
as to get to the bottom of everything," said the boy, with the vast
purposes of his age.
"Your chances will be much better if you go up from a public school,
trained in accuracy by the thorough work of language, and made more
powerful by the very fact of not having followed merely your own
bent. Your contempt for the classics shows how one-sided you are
growing. Besides, I thought you knew that the days are over of
unmitigated classics. You would have many more opportunities, and
much better ones, of studying physical science than I can provide for
you here."
This was a new light to Bobus, and when Mr. Ogilvie proved its truth
to him, and described the facilities he would have for the study, he
allowed that it made all the difference.
Meantime the two ladies had gone in, Mary asking where Janet was.
"Gone with Jessie and her mother to a birthday party at Polesworth
Lawn."
"Not a good day for it."
"It is the perplexing sort of day that no one knows whether to call
it fine or wet; but Ellen decided on going, as they were to dance in
the hall if it rained.
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