While it was well enough and useful enough that Nan should go on with
her present mode of life, they both had a wider outlook, and though
with the excuse of her youthfulness they had put off her departure as
long as possible, still almost without any discussion it was decided
that she must enter the medical school to go through with its course
of instruction formally, and receive its authority to practice her
profession. They both felt that this held a great many unpleasantnesses
among its store of benefits. Nan was no longer to be shielded and
protected and guided by some one whose wisdom she rarely questioned,
but must make her own decisions instead, and give from her own bounty,
and stand in her lot and place. Her later school-days were sure to be
more trying than her earlier ones, as they carried her into deeper
waters of scholarship, and were more important to her future position
before the public.
If a young man plans the same course, everything conspires to help him
and forward him, and the very fact of his having chosen one of the
learned professions gives him a certain social preeminence and
dignity. But in the days of Nan's student life it was just the
reverse. Though she had been directed toward such a purpose entirely
by her singular talent, instead of by the motives of expediency which
rule the decisions of a large proportion of the young men who study
medicine, she found little encouragement either from the quality of
the school or the interest of society in general.
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