If you can understand a state of things where the sciences and
arts and letters are cultivated for their own sake, and not as a means of
livelihood--"
"No," said the lawyer, smiling, "I'm afraid we can't conceive of that. We
consider the pinch of poverty the highest incentive that a man can have.
If our gifted friend here," he said, indicating me, "were not kept like a
toad under the harrow, with his nose on the grindstone, and the poorhouse
staring him in the face--"
"For Heaven's sake," I cried out, "don't mix your metaphors so, anyway!"
"If it were not for that and all the other hardships that literary men
undergo--
'Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail'--
his novels probably wouldn't be worth reading."
"Ah!" said the Altrurian, as if he did not quite follow this joking; and,
to tell the truth, I never find the personal thing in very good taste.
"You will understand, then, how extremely difficult it is for me to
imagine a condition of things like yours--although I have it under my very
eyes--where the money consideration is the first consideration."
"Oh, excuse me," urged the minister; "I don't think that's quite the
case.
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