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experiences went for little or nothing then; and that life was
more like a great fairy story, which I was just about to begin
to read, than anything else.
MY aunt and I had held many grave deliberations on the
calling to which I should be devoted. For a year or more I
had endeavoured to find a satisfactory answer to her often-
repeated question, ‘What I would like to be?’ But I had no
particular liking, that I could discover, for anything. If I
could have been inspired with a knowledge of the science
of navigation, taken the command of a fast-sailing expe-
dition, and gone round the world on a triumphant voyage
of discovery, I think I might have considered myself com-
pletely suited. But, in the absence of any such miraculous
provision, my desire was to apply myself to some pursuit
that would not lie too heavily upon her purse; and to do my
duty in it, whatever it might be.
Mr. Dick had regularly assisted at our councils, with a
meditative and sage demeanour. He never made a sugges-
tion but once; and on that occasion (I don’t know what put
it in his head), he suddenly proposed that I should be ‘a Bra-
zier’. My aunt received this proposal so very ungraciously,
that he never ventured on a second; but ever afterwards
confined himself to looking watchfully at her for her sug-
gestions, and rattling his money.
‘Trot, I tell you what, my dear,’ said my aunt, one morning
in the Christmas season when I left school: ‘as this knotty
point is still unsettled, and as we must not make a mistake
in our decision if we can help it, I think we had better take
a little breathing-time. In the meanwhile, you must try to

10 David Copperfield