Publisher's Synopsis
Among the many fatalities attending the bloom of young desire, that of blindlytaking to the confectionery line has not, perhaps, been sufficiently considered. Howis the son of a British yeoman, who has been fed principally on salt pork and yeastdumplings, to know that there is satiety for the human stomach even in a paradiseof glass jars full of sugared almonds and pink lozenges, and that the tedium of lifecan reach a pitch where plum-buns at discretion cease to offer the slightestexcitement? Or how, at the tender age when a confectioner seems to him a veryprince whom all the world must envy-who breakfasts on macaroons, dines onmeringues, sups on twelfth-cake, and fills up the intermediate hours with sugarcandy or peppermint-how is he to foresee the day of sad wisdom, when he willdiscern that the confectioner's calling is not socially influential, or favourable to asoaring ambition? I have known a man who turned out to have a metaphysicalgenius, incautiously, in the period of youthful buoyancy, commence his career as adancing-master; and you may imagine the use that was made of this initial mistakeby opponents who felt themselves bound to warn the public against his doctrine ofthe Inconceivable.
