The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 27, January, 1860: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 27, January, 1860: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Now if this young man once got into the _wide streets_, he would sweep
them clear of his rivals of the same standing; and as I was getting
indifferent to business, and old Dr. Kilham was growing careless, and
had once or twice prescribed morphine when he meant quinine, there would
soon he an opening into the Doctors' Paradise,--the _streets with only
one side to them_. Then I would have him strike a bold stroke,--set up a
nice little coach, and be driven round like a London first-class doctor,
instead of coasting about in a shabby one-horse concern and casting
anchor opposite his patients' doors like a Cape-Ann fishing-smack. By
the time he was thirty, he would have knocked the social pawns out of
his way, and be ready to challenge a wife from the row of great pieces
in the background. I would not have a man marry above his level, so as
to become the appendage of a powerful family-connection; but I would not
have him marry until he knew his level,--that is, again, looking at the
matter in a purely worldly point of view, and not taking the sentiments
at all into consideration. But remember, that a young man, using large
endowments wisely and fortunately, may put himself on a level with the
highest in the land in ten brilliant years of spirited, unflagging
labor. And even to stand at the very top of your calling in a great city
is something,--that is, if you like money and influence, and a seat on
the platform at public lectures, and gratuitous tickets to all sorts of
places where you don't want to go, and, what is a good deal better than
any of these things, a sense of power, limited, it may be, but absolute
in its range, so that all the Caesars and Napoleons would have to
stand aside, if they came between you and the exercise of your special
vocation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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