“Should you not do better in a larger field among a higher stamp of boys?” “Public school boys are such fools!” “And what are the Kenites?” “Well, not much,” said Bobus, with a twitch in the corner of his mouth; “but I can keep out of their way.” “You mean that you have gained your footing, and don’t want to have to do it again.” “Not only that, sir,” said the boy, “but at a public school you’re fagged, and forced to go in for cricket and football.” “You would soon get above that.” “Yes, but even then you get no peace, and are nobody unless you go in for all that stuff of athletics and sports. I hate it all, and don’t want to waste my time.” “I don’t think you are quite right as to there being no distinction without athletics.” “Allen says it is so now.” “Allen may be a better judge of the present state of things, but I should think there was always a studious set who were respectable.” “Besides,” proceeded Bobus, warming with his subject, “I see no good in nothing but classics. I don’t care what ridiculous lies some old man who never existed, or else was a dozen people at once, told about a lot of ruffians who never lived, killing each other at some place that never was. I like what you can lay your finger on, and say it’s here, it’s true, and I can prove it, and explain it, and improve on it.” “If you can,” said Mr. Ogilvie, struck by the contrast with the little brother. “That’s what I want to do,” said Bobus; “to deal with real things, not words and empty fancies. I know languages are necessary; but if one can read a Latin book, and understand a Greek technical term, that’s all that is of use. If my uncle won’t let me study physical science in Germany, I had rather go on here, where I can be let alone to study it for myself.” “I do not think you understand what you would throw away. What is the difference between Higg, the bone-setter, and Dr. Leslie?” “Higg can do that one thing just by instinct. He is uneducated.” “And in a measure it is so with all who throw themselves into some special pursuit without waiting for the mind and character to have full training and expansion. 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.”