Instinctively, we sat very erect, feeling that the Professor was about to enter on a list of the splendid careers from which we had only to choose. We were confident that he was about to proclaim the magnificent position we would one day occupy in the literary hall of fame. After what he had said about our peerless set of protuberances, we felt that no forecast could be too rosy. So we straightened up in eager expectation.
"With a head loike yours," said the Professor in his loudest and most impressive tone, "ye'd have no difficulty in takin' a very liberal eddication if ye'd only lay yer moind to it. Ye moight roise to be a bookkeeper or a commercial thraveller. Ye moight even become a lawyer or a doctor or a professional man, if ye only had confidence in yerself. Ye could be a foine piano-player and an iligant parlor singer. Ye could also be a fluent and graceful public speaker. Ye have a good deal of real-estate ability and consid'rable speculatin' capacity and quoite a bit of organizin' talent. Ye could be a furst-rate draughtsman; and ye have a genius for inventin'. In fact, ye could be almost annythin' ye made up yer moind to be--and there ye are!"
Yes, there we were! We could take a "liberal eddication," if only--and all the time a big parchment with a huge red seal lay carefully rolled up in our trunk as evidence of our scholastic attainments! It is the only evidence we possess. We could "roise" to be a book-keeper or a commercial "thraveller"--but never a word to the effect that we might some day be able to write or might ever aspire to journalistic eminence. Not that the Professor was necessarily so far astray at that. He may have been quite right. We admit it humbly. But it was a sad blow to have such a commonplace future outlined for us, after the way he had raised our hopes. And real-estate ability!--it sounded like an attack on our moral character.
"Moreover, ye could become a foine boxer," he continued, "or a beautiful fencer. Ye have such soople movements. Ye could learn to fence in half the toime it takes an ordinary man. And a useful thing it is, too. Suppose ye were attacked on the street, fer instance."
All we would have to do in such a case, we presume, would be to draw our flashing rapier, throw ourself on guard, and "have at you, varlets!" Or perhaps the Professor intended that we should do this with our walking-stick or rolled up umbrella. Somehow the idea did not appeal much to us--spitting a man with your umbrella musses it up so dreadfully.