"Now, all that I can understand," said young Dunbar. "But I must own that what your father says finds no response in my bosom. I suppose a doctor may be very useful to his fellows, but who thanks him for it, or even pays his bills, moderate as they may be, without grumbling? As for me, I don't see any particular pleasure that I should derive from devoting myself to the good of others, and especially in so slavish a calling as that of the physician. And it's my opinion that you will be sick of it before you are ten years older." "As to that," replied Hudson, "I do not expect to find all plain sailing, let me adopt what pursuit I may. Medicine I incline to as a profession, though not because I can be more useful in it than I can be in any other; for every regular calling in life regards the common good, and in each and all of them men may engage with unselfish motives; but because it suits my temper of mind, and I can see clearly how in the practice of it I can attain the requisite external things I need, at the same time that I can be of great use to my fellows. As for the ambition to rise in the world to a distinguished position, of which you speak, I must own that I do not feel as strongly as you do its impulses. That I shall rise just as high as I deserve, there is not the least doubt, and with this conviction I am content to enter upon the life-toil that is before me, with patient confidence that all will come out right in the future." "Too quiet a philosophy for me, Lloyd," returned Dunbar. "I feel the spurs of ambition already piercing my sides. I am resolved to rise in the world: I know that I possess the ability, and I mean to tax it to the utmost. As for other men's good, let them take care of that themselves. I shall seek my own, well convinced that if I do not, there will be no one to seek it for me." "To regard the good of others, while we seek our own, is by no means a difficult thing," replied Hudson. "This is a truth which I have been taught by my father from the first. Indeed, he has ever sought most earnestly to impress it upon my mind." "He is not anxious to see you rise in the world?" said Dunbar. "Most anxious; for, he says, the higher I rise, the more extended will be my sphere of usefulness. But he, when he speaks of rising in the world, means something more than the mere attainment of wealth, or honorable distinction in the eyes of men." "What more can he mean?" "No man truly rises in the world, he says, who does not overcome and rise above the evil and selfish passions of his nature. There is an internal as well as an external elevation; and the latter without the former, is, in his estimation, more of a curse than a blessing. To rise internally as well as externally, we must regard the good of others as well as our own good, in all the acts of our lives. Can you not see this?" "Dimly; that is all." "Even that is something."