Mr Deane tapped his snuff-box again and screwed up his mouth; he felt in the position of many estimable persons when they had read the New Tariff, and found how many commodities were imported of which they knew nothing; like a cautious man of business, he was not going to speak rashly of a raw material in which he had had no experience. But the presumption was, that if it had been good for anything, so successful a man as himself would hardly have been ignorant of it. About Latin he had an opinion, and thought that in case of another war, since people would no longer wear hair-powder, it would be well to put a tax upon Latin, as a luxury much run upon by the higher classes, and not telling at all on the ship-owning department. But, for what he knew, the Horæ Paulinæ might be something less neutral. On the whole, this list of acquirements gave him a sort of repulsion toward poor Tom. “Well,” he said at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone, “you’ve had three years at these things,—you must be pretty strong in ’em. Hadn’t you better take up some line where they’ll come in handy?” Tom coloured, and burst out, with new energy: “I’d rather not have any employment of that sort, uncle. I don’t like Latin and those things. I don’t know what I could do with them unless I went as usher in a school; and I don’t know them well enough for that! besides, I would as soon carry a pair of panniers. I don’t want to be that sort of person. I should like to enter into some business where I can get on,—a manly business, where I should have to look after things, and get credit for what I did. And I shall want to keep my mother and sister.” “Ah, young gentleman,” said Mr Deane, with that tendency to repress youthful hopes which stout and successful men of fifty find one of their easiest duties, “that’s sooner said than done,—sooner said than done.” “But didn’t _you_ get on in that way, uncle?” said Tom, a little irritated that Mr Deane did not enter more rapidly into his views. “I mean, didn’t you rise from one place to another through your abilities and good conduct?”