“Rosalie, I made an effort, many an effort, to get admitted to practice, at the bar of S——. I had thought myself well qualified, for I had studied legal science with what you call an attraction—a vocation for the profession. For several years past I had read law _con amore_; yet, through the want of familiarity with the technicalities of practice, I failed to get admitted as a practitioner before the court.” “Then I would have gone into some lawyer’s office, and assisted him as a copyist for nothing, until I had acquired an intimacy with those crabbed technicalities. It seems to me such a very trivial matter for an impediment. Why, there is your uncle, who is no lawyer, but who can draw up a right legal and binding document, with as many ‘whereases’ and ‘aforesaids’ as ever made a composition unintelligible.” “My dear Rosalie, that would have been a very small beginning.” “‘Despise not the day of small things,’ said the wise man. And at least the lawyer’s office would have been in the way of your genius; and to have entered it in the capacity of copyist would have been much better than to have turned into this by-path, which is utterly apart from it.” “There were difficulties in the way of even that, Rosalie.” “And even if there _were_ difficulties, what then? We have no royal road to distinction in our country. We have no ready-made great men. None are ‘born great;’ none have ‘greatness thrust upon them.’ If any would be great, he must ‘achieve greatness.’ Nearly _all_ of our heroes and statesmen have struggled up from the humblest places in society—have struggled up, alone and unaided, until they have proved their mettle; and the struggle has been wholesome for them, and has turned them out sound and healthful natures.” “You speak wisely and truly, dear Rosalie; yet each of all these men to whom you have alluded, had near and dear friends—mother, sisters, a wife, perhaps—to watch his career, and rejoice in it—to soothe him in moments of exasperation, from injustice, from opposition, from persecution, and to encourage him in hours of depression and despondency, when all his hopes and energies seemed palsied, and the wheels of life and action seemed clogged and stopped; and, finally, to share and enjoy his success, and to glory in his triumph. Oh, believe me, Rosalie, man cannot work for himself alone! It were a low and selfish aim!” “But he can work for humanity—he can work for God!” said Rosalie, in a low and reverent voice. Mark Sutherland sat with his eyes fixed upon the ground, in deep thought. Rosalie continued—