took a pinch of snuff and crossed one knee over the other before he
ventured an opinion on the subject.

"I know so very little of the young gentleman," he began, "as scarcely
to be able to advise you on a matter of such moment, and have hitherto
declined from so doing on that account, but as you so desire it, I will
give my opinion on the matter according to the best of my judgment."

"Thank you, thank you, that is all I ask. Then," resumed the lawyer,
"the road by which a young man of education can, by perseverance, hope
to earn for himself a competency and a good position in the social
scale, is that of the church, the navy or in the military service of his
country. As for the pulpit, unless the aspirant has a special tendency
for it, or some good friend who has a living to bestow, he will hardly
realize a sufficient income to support himself as a gentleman; and to
send him up to London to study law, or medicine for two or three years
would but expose him to the temptations and dissipations of that great
city, and it would take years of drudgery before he would be able to
obtain a competency. In my opinion the safest and most expeditious way
of proceeding is to put him into the army; his commission and outfit is
the only outlay, and can be done at once; his position is established,
and it only remains with himself to rise in his profession, and you will
be relieved from all care and responsibility on his account; but
understand me, I do not mean that he should enter one of the regiments,
now in England, to loiter his time away at some country quarters or
fashionable watering place, to fall into debt, difficulty, love, or some
other absurd scrape, but put him into some corps that is now and will be
for some years stationed somewhere abroad, India, for instance, for I
have been, by competent authorities, informed that there an officer can
live comfortably on the pay of his rank.