“Trouble? Oh, my dear boy, that is a word with out a meaning! Trouble? What _is_ trouble? What idea is the word designed to represent? Trouble? Oh, my dear fellow, it is all a mistake, a mere notion, a superstition, a prejudice; a saying of old folks, who, being near the verge of departure from this bright, glad, joyous, jubilant world, vainly try to console themselves by slandering it as a world of trouble, and talk of a _better_ one, to which they are progressing. If this world in itself is not ‘good,’ as the Creator pronounced it to be in the beginning, by all the rules of comparison, how can any other world be said to be better?” “Well, I believe in the better world as much as they do; but look you! the pleasantest notion I have of Heaven is its being—being”—— “Oh, don’t let it go any further—as _good_ as this world, and only better as far as it endures longer. _This_ world is full of all that is great and glorious for enjoyment! And, Lincoln, my fine fellow, enter and take possession! _Don’t_ teach or study law! _Don’t_ plod; it is ungentlemanly. Somebody, I suppose, must teach and study law, and do such things—but don’t _you_. Do you leave it to those a—those persons a—those in fact who have the plebeian instinct of labor; you apprehend? They really _enjoy_ work now! Just think of it! I suppose that gracious nature, intending them to carry on the work of the world, endowed them with a _taste for it_! Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! But _I_’ve no vocation for it! Neither have you, my dear boy. Don’t force your nature in an opposite direction to which it tends, therefore! Enter life, and take possession!” “Humph! thank you! This is to say, ‘follow my attractions,’ and if they ‘attract’ me to lead an idle life, and live upon other people, why, so much the better—they are my attractions; and if they ‘attract’ me to pick my host’s pocket, or run away with his daughter, it is the same thing by the same law.” “Ha! ha! ha! Oh, certainly; remembering that your host might experience an attraction to blow your brains out.” “Pleasant points to be drawn to. I guess I shall not follow my attractions! I’ll stick to the little law shop, and relieve weariness by grumbling. Some distinguished men have emerged from those little law dens; and, by the way, seriously, my dear Mark, I think that I, that you, even _you_, possess those very qualities out of which _really_ distinguished men are formed, and that if destiny had not ‘thrust’ a sort of moneyed and landed greatness upon you, that even _you_ would ‘achieve’ some judicial, political, diplomatic, or intellectual greatness of some sort.” “Ha! ha! ha! even _I_! Well, that is a stretch of possibility, indeed. Even _I_, humph! _Mais à nos moutons._ Will you come home with me? Do come and be my guest _à éternité_—or until you win some rich Mississippi beauty. Woo beauty, not Blackstone, for a fortune. You have so much more genius for the first than for the last, my fine fellow.”