An Essay Picked by blupete  "On The Choice Of A Profession" By
Robert Louis Stevenson.  You write to me, my dear sir,
requesting advice at one of the most momentous epochs in a young
man's life. You are about to choose a profession; and with a
diffidence highly pleasing at your age, you would be glad, you
say, of some guidance in the choice. There is nothing more
becoming than for youth to seek counsel; nothing more becoming
to age than to be able to give it; and in a civilisation old and
complicated like ours, where practical persons boast of a kind
of practical philosophy superior to all others, you would very
naturally expect to find all such questions systematically
answered. For the dicta of the Practical Philosophy, you come to
me. What, you ask, are the principles usually followed by the
wise in the like critical junctures? There, I confess, you pose
me on the threshold. I have examined my own recollections; I
have interrogated others; and with all the will in the world to
serve you better, I fear I ca