use to me after that?

After I left school, I had the narrowest escape possible of intruding
myself into another place of accommodation for distinguished people; in
other words, I was very nearly being sent to college. Fortunately for
me, my father lost a lawsuit just in the nick of time, and was obliged
to scrape together every farthing of available money that he possessed
to pay for the luxury of going to law. If he could have saved his seven
shillings, he would certainly have sent me to scramble for a place in
the pit of the great university theater; but his purse was empty, and
his son was not eligible therefore for admission, in a gentlemanly
capacity, at the doors.

The next thing was to choose a profession.

Here the Doctor was liberality itself, in leaving me to my own devices.
I was of a roving adventurous temperament, and I should have liked to
go into the army. But where was the money to come from, to pay for my
commission? As to enlisting in the ranks, and working my way up,
the social institutions of my country obliged the grandson of Lady
Malkinshaw to begin military life as an officer and gentleman, or not
to begin it at all. The army, therefore, was out of the question. The
Church? Equally out of the question: since I could not pay for admission
to the prepared place of accommodation for distinguished people, and
could not accept a charitable free pass, in consequence of my high
connections. The Bar? I should be five years getting to it, and should
have to spend two hundred a year in going circuit before I had earned a
farthing. Physic? This really seemed the only gentlemanly refuge left;
and yet, with the knowledge of my father's experience before me, I was
ungrateful enough to feel a secret dislike for it. It is a degrading