possible to answer these questions without a trial; and there is
nothing more obvious to my mind, than that a man who has not
experienced some ups and downs, and been forced to live more
cheaply than in his father's house, has still his education to
begin. Let the experiment be made, and he will find to his
surprise that he has been eating beyond his appetite up to that
hour; that the cheap lodging, the cheap tobacco, the rough country
clothes, the plain table, have not only no power to damp his
spirits, but perhaps give him as keen pleasure in the using as the
dainties that he took, betwixt sleep and waking, in his former
callous and somnambulous submission to wealth.

The true Bohemian, a creature lost to view under the imaginary
Bohemians of literature, is exactly described by such a principle
of life. The Bohemian of the novel, who drinks more than is good
for him and prefers anything to work, and wears strange clothes, is
for the most part a respectable Bohemian, respectable in
disrespectability, living for the outside, and an adventurer. But
the man I mean lives wholly to himself, does what he wishes, and
not what is thought proper, buys what he wants for himself, and not
what is thought proper, works at what he believes he can do well
and not what will bring him in money or favour. You may be the
most respectable of men, and yet a true Bohemian. And the test is
this: a Bohemian, for as poor as he may be, is always open-handed
to his friends; he knows what he can do with money and how he can
do without it, a far rarer and more useful knowledge; he has had
less, and continued to live in some contentment; and hence he cares
not to keep more, and shares his sovereign or his shilling with a
friend. The poor, if they are generous, are Bohemian in virtue of
their birth. Do you know where beggars go? Not to the great