"Alfred Stevens; there are many Stevenses: I have known several
and sundry. There is a worthy family of that name by the waters of
the Dan."
"You will find them, I suspect, from Dan to Beersheba," responded
the youth with a resumption of his former levity.
"Truly, it may be so. The name is of good repute. But what is thy
calling, Alfred Stevens? Methinks at thy age thou shouldst have
one."
"So I have, reverend sir," replied the other; "my calling heretofore
has been that of the law. But it likes me not, and I think soon to
give it up."
"Thou wilt take to some other then. What other hast thou chosen; or
art thou like those unhappy youths, by far too many in our blessed
country, whom fortune hath hurt by her gifts, and beguiled into
idleness and sloth?"
"Nay, not so, reverend sir; the gifts of fortune have been somewhat
sparing in my case, and I am even now conferring with my own thoughts
whether or not to take to school-keeping. Nay, perhaps, I should
incline to something better, if I could succeed in persuading myself
of my own worthiness in a vocation which, more than all others,
demands a pure mind with a becoming zeal.
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