A common Tradesman cannot afford
to let his son spend a third of his life in abstract studies.
The children of the poor are therefore allowed to "feel"
from their earliest years, and they gain thereby a precocity
and an early vivacity which contrast at first most favourably with
the inert, undeveloped, and listless behaviour of the half-instructed
youths of the Polygonal class; but when the latter have at last
completed their University course, and are prepared to put
their theory into practice, the change that comes over them
may almost be described as a new birth, and in every art, science,
and social pursuit they rapidly overtake and distance
their Triangular competitors.
Only a few of the Polygonal Class fail to pass the Final Test
or Leaving Examination at the University. The condition of
the unsuccessful minority is truly pitiable. Rejected from
the higher class, they are also despised by the lower.
They have neither the matured and systematically trained powers
of the Polygonal Bachelors and Masters of Arts, nor yet the native
precocity and mercurial versatility of the youthful Tradesman.
The professions, the public services, are closed against them;
and though in most States they are not actually debarred
from marriage, yet they have the greatest difficulty in forming
suitable alliances, as experience shews that the offspring of such
unfortunate and ill-endowed parents is generally itself unfortunate,
if not positively Irregular.
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