Can you bear what is called public contempt? Are you clothed with a moral armour, more impenetrable than the scales of the dragon—from which the glances of reproach, the scoffs, the sneers, the hard abuse of vulgar minds—the mere pity of those prigs who call themselves philanthropists—shall fall aside unfelt and unremembered? Can you school yourself to look in all human faces—for this trial _will_ come—and find them blank? Have you sufficient fortitude to witness unrepiningly the good fortune of some early companion—a dullard, yet plodding, and what the world calls honest—surrounded with all the luxuries of life, the fruits of lowly huckstering, when, possibly, you yourself are yearning for a tester? Can you bear with the nerves of a martyr the visitation of a horse-whip—for I will not shirk any of the probabilities that wait upon the profession—or the vindictive and un-Christianlike application of a pointed boot to the _os sacrum_?[19] Footnote 19: “It is very strange,” remarks Captain Whitefeather in one of his unpublished essays, “On Personal Satisfaction,” “how very few men know what is due to themselves and to the second party, in inflicting what they call personal chastisement. I have,” continues the Captain, with that delightful ingenuousness which made him the soul of his circle, “I have been kicked, horsewhipped, cudgelled, tossed in a blanket, pumped upon and flung into a horse-pond, yet I never, but in one instance, met with a man who thrashed me _like a gentleman_?”—[JOHN JACKDAW, Ed.] Can you, at proper time and season, bear your nose pulled? I am aware that this is perhaps the most difficult, the most trying ordeal for the weakness of human nature to withstand; and therefore, I repeat the question—Can you bear your nose pulled? Can you, with no qualms at your throat, behold in rags or in a gaol the simple gull who has trusted you, or who—more exquisitely simple still—has become your surety? Can you, when old age approaches, and your place in the world is filled up by more active, more youthful professors—can you, with your hand upon your heart, retire like a philosopher to a corner, and with not an eye to look comfort to you, not a lip to breathe hope to you, not a hand to grasp your hand—can you breathe your last breath with the conviction that you have done no injury to the dead, will leave no wounds in the living—and that having passed a life in heroic defiance of human prejudices, you meet death with the magnanimous indifference of a roasted Indian? Consider, my dear pupil, whether you are so happily organised that you can support these trials—too often attendant on our chivalrous profession—and answer. The pupil laughs at the impossibility of such evils, and, chuckling at the fun, says—I can. And Swindling takes him to her arms and makes him all her own! CHAPTER V. A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE ADVANTAGES OF SWINDLING