Success in any scientific career requires an unusual equipment of
capacity, industry and energy. If you possess that equipment you will
find leisure enough after your daily commercial work is over, to make
an opening in the scientific ranks for yourself. If you do not, you had
better stick to commerce.
Nothing is less to be desired than the fate of a young man, who, as
the Scotch proverb says, in 'trying to make a spoon spoils a horn' and
becomes a mere hanger-on in literature or in science, when he might have
been a useful and a valuable member of Society in other occupations.