'312 WITH KITCHENER IK THE SOUDAH Then interest has nothing to do with it ? ” “Well, yes. There are a few berths in the Foreign Office, for example, in which a man has to get a nomination before going in for the exam. ; but of course the age limit tells there as well as in any other.”

“ And if a man fails altogether what is there open to him ? ” The other shrugged his shoulders. “ Well, as far as I know, if he hasnT capital he can emigrate, that is what numbers of fellows do. If he has interest he can get a commission in the militia, and from that possibly into the line, or he can enlist as a private for the same object. There is a third alternative, he can hang himself. Of course, if he happens to have a relation in the city he can get a clerkship, but that alternative, I should say, is worse than the third.” “ But I suppose he might be a doctor, a clergyman, or a lawyer ? ” “ I don’t know much about those matters, but I do know that it takes about five years’ grinding, and what is called walking the hospitals,’ that is, going round the wards with the surgeons, before one is licensed to kill. I think, but I am not sure, that three years at the bar would admit you to practice, and usually another seven or eight years are spent before you earn a penny. As for the Church, you have to go through the. university or one of the places we call training colleges ; and when at last you are ordained you may reckon, unless you have great family interest, on remaining a curate, with perhaps one hundred or one hundred and fifty pounds per annum for eighteen or twenty years.”

“ And no amount of energy will enable a man of, say, fourand-twenty, without a profession, to obtain a post on which he could live with some degree of comfort ? ” “ I don’t think energy would have anything to do with it. You cannot drop into a merchant’s office and say ‘ I want a snug berth out in China,’ or ‘ I should like an agency in Mesopotamia.’ If you have luck, anything is possible; if you haven’t luck, you ought to fall back on my three alterna-