At this period the enthusiasm of the amateur was fast giving way to a more steady commercial instinct, and I let no opportunity slip of improving my position, but I felt that I was still labouring under the disadvantage of not having acquired some technical profession.
You can be very successful but still struggling financially, and it looked like I'd have to take a year or two off and find whatever menial labouring work you can get as a middle-aged, unskilled bald man.
You stars that reigned at my nativity, / Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, / Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist, / Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud.