"No!" cried Mr. Boythorn, firmly. "Not on any consideration! Eight-and-forty hours! As to Corporations, Parishes, Vestry-Boards, and similar gatherings of jolter-headed clods, who assemble to exchange such speeches that, by Heaven! they ought to be worked in quicksilver mines for the short remainder of their miserable existence, if it were only to prevent their detestable English from contaminating a language spoken in the presence of the Sun--as to those fellows, who meanly take advantage of the ardor of gentlemen in the pursuit of knowledge, to recompense the inestimable services of the best years of their lives, their long study, and their expensive education, with pittances too small for the acceptance of clerks, I would have the necks of every one of them wrung, and their skulls arranged in Surgeons' Hall for the contemplation of the whole profession--in order that its younger members might understand from actual measurement, in early life, _how_ thick skulls may become!" He wound up this vehement declaration by looking round upon us with a most agreeable smile, and suddenly thundering, Ha, ha, ha! over and over again, until any body else might have been expected to be quite subdued by the exertion. As Richard still continued to say that he was fixed in his choice, after repeated periods for consideration had been recommended by Mr. Jarndyce, and had expired; and as he still continued to assure Ada and me, in the same final manner that it was "all right;" it became advisable to take Mr. Kenge into council. Mr. Kenge therefore, came down to dinner one day, and leaned back in his chair, and turned his eye-glasses over and over, and spoke in a sonorous voice, and did exactly what I remembered to have seen him do when I was a little girl. "Ah!" said Mr. Kenge. "Yes. Well? A very good profession, Mr. Jarndyce; a very good profession." "The course of study and preparation requires to be diligently pursued," observed my Guardian, with a glance at Richard. "O, no doubt," said Mr. Kenge. "Diligently." "But that being the case, more or less, with all pursuits that are worth much," said Mr. Jarndyce, "it is not a special consideration which another choice would be likely to escape." "Truly," said Mr. Kenge. "And Mr. Richard Carstone, who has so meritoriously acquitted himself in the--shall I say the classic shades?--in which his youth had been passed, will, no doubt, apply the habits, if not the principles and practice, of versification in that tongue in which a poet was said (unless I mistake) to be born, not made, to the more eminently practical field of action on which he enters." "You may rely upon it," said Richard, in his off-hand manner, "that I shall go at it, and do my best."