If, to change the metaphor, an academy has taken a bad shilling, it is
seldom very scrupulous about trying to pass it on. It will stick to it
that the shilling is a good one as long as the police will let it. I was
very happy at Cambridge; when I left it I thought I never again could be
so happy anywhere else; I shall ever retain a most kindly recollection
both of Cambridge and of the school where I passed my boyhood; but I
feel, as I think most others must in middle life, that I have spent as
much of my maturer years in unlearning as in learning.
The proper course is for a boy to begin the practical business of life
many years earlier than he now commonly does. He should begin at the
very bottom of a profession; if possible of one which his family has
pursued before him--for the professions will assuredly one day become
hereditary. The ideal railway director will have begun at fourteen as a
railway porter. He need not be a porter for more than a week or ten
days, any more than he need have been a tadpole more than a short time;
but he should take a turn in practice, though briefly, at each of the
lower branches in the profession. The painter should do just the same.
He should begin by setting his employer's palette and cleaning his
brushes. As for the good side of universities, the proper preservative
of this is to be found in the club.
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