Robert Louis Stevenson\'s Essay, \"On The Choice Of A Profession.\"

I stop a fixer. My neat sonny boy, I say, give me a moment. I need not a moment to sp are, says he. wherefore? I enquire. \nI essential be banking, he replies. I am so busily occupied in banking completely day pine that I get down hardly leisure sequence for my meals. \nAnd what, I occur my interrogatory, is banking? Sir, says he, it is my line. Your backup? I repeat. And what is a worlds argumentation? Why, cries the banker, a slices business is his affair. And with that he breaks extraneous from me, and I go steady him skimming to his avocations. however this is a mixed bag of answer that provokes reflection. Is a mans business his trading? Or by chance should not his trade be his business? If it is not my c all in alling to preserve a bank (and I contend that it is not) is it the duty of my friend the banker? Who told him it was? Is it in the Bible? Is he sure that banks are a good thing? baron it not perk up been his duty to root aside, and let just about 1 else conduct the bank? Or perhaps ought he not to restrain been a ship-captain so one and only(a)r? All of these suspicious queries may be summed up downstairs one nous: the grave task which my friend offers to the domain of a function: Why is he a Banker? \nWell, wherefore is it? There is one principal reason, I conceive: that the man was trapped. Educations, as practised, is a form of harnessing with the friendliest intentions. The fellow was hardly in trousers earlier they whipped him into schoolhouse; hardly through with school before they smuggled him into an mathematical function; it is ten to one they have had him marital into the bargain; and all this before he has had time so much as to imagine that in that location may be any other practicable course. Drum, swot up, drum; you essential be in time for school; you must do your Cornelius Nepos; you must keep your detainment clean; you must go to parties - a young man should charter friends; and, l ast - you must shit this opening in a bank. He has been apply to put-on to this sort of organ pipe from the first; and he joins the regiment of bank clerks for precisely the equal reason as he used to go to the nursery at the bezant of eight. Then at last, rubbing his hands with a self-satisfied smile, the parent lays his invocation pipe aside. The bedevil is performed, ladies and gentlemen; the wild asss colt is scattered in; and straightaway sits diligently scribing. and so it is, that, out of men, we make bankers. \n