Chapter 1

brief story intelligently. In any case, I interested him; so much I saw clearly and with satisfaction. I noted, too, that he was impressed by the name of the London newspaper with which my father had been connected before his determination to seek peace in the wilds.

'H'm!' 'Ah!' 'Strange!' 'A recluse indeed!' 'And you think he had never seen this--St. Peter's, that is, when he wrote the letter arranging for you to come here? Well, to be sure, there was little choice, of course, little choice enough, and in such a lonely, isolated place.'

I remember these among his exclamations and comments upon my story. And then he asked me what ideas I had about my future, and I told him, none. I also told him of Ted's visit and of his offer to me, and my refusal of it.

'Yes,' he said, 'that was wise of you, I think; that certainly was best. In some countries now, in the Old World, one might advise you to stick to the country. But here-- Well, you know, there must be some real reason for the rapid growth of the Australian capital cities, and the comparative stagnation of the countryside. The more cultured people won't leave the capitals, and that affects country life. Yes, but why won't they leave the cities? They do in the Old World, for I've met 'em in the villages and country towns there. But why is it?'

Mr. Rawlence could hardly have expected an answer from me; but part of his charm was that he made it seem, while he talked and I listened, that we were jointly discussing the subject of his monologue, and that he was much interested by my views. He had that air; his smile and his manner made one feel that.

'Well, you know,' he continued, 'it must be partly the crude material difficulties which the actual and physical conditions of country life here present to educated people, and partly the fact that our country in Australia has got no traditions, no associations, no atmosphere. It is just a negation, a wilderness; not a rural civilisation, but a mere gap in civilisation. Pioneering is picturesque enough--in fiction. In fact, it permits of no leisure and no idealisation; and without those things----'

Mr. Rawlence paused with outstretched hands, shrugging shoulders, and the smile of one who should say--'You understand, of course.' My modest contribution was in three words, delivered with emphatic gestures of acquiescence--'That's just it.'

'Exactly,' resumed the artist. 'Without leisure, without time for anything outside the material things of life, where is your culture? Where is art? Where is romance? Where, in short, is civilisation? And so, as I say, I cannot advise you to stick to the country here. No, one really can't conscientiously advise that, you know.'

A listener might fairly have supposed that I was a young gentleman of means who had sought advice as to the desirability of investing capital in rural New South Wales, and taking up, say, the pastoral life, in preference to a professional career in Sydney. I pinched my knees exultingly; perhaps to demonstrate to myself the fact that all this was no dream. It was I, the orphan, who was carrying on this thrilling conversation with an accomplished man of the world, a distinguished artist. I felt that Mr. Rawlence must clearly be a distinguished artist.

'And so what--what would you advise me to do?' I asked when a pause came. And, immediately, I reproached myself, feeling that I had broken a delightful spell, and risked abruptly ending the most interesting conversation in which I ever took part. The words of my question had so crude a sound. They dragged our talk down to a lower plane, to a plane merely utilitarian, almost squalid by comparison with the roseate heights we had been easily skimming. That was how the sound of my own poor words struck me; but my companion was not so easily dashed. My crudity could not fret his accomplished _savoir-faire_. (Mr. Rawlence impressed me as the most finished man of the world I had ever met, with the single exception of my father; and, indeed, the Sydney artist did shine brightly beside the sort of people I had lived among of late.)

'Well,' he said, with smiling thoughtfulness, 'I would advise you, when--when the time comes, to make your way to Sydney, and to--to work up a place for yourself there. Of course, there is your native country--England. Who knows? Some day, perhaps-- But, meantime, I think Sydney offers better chances than any other place in this country. Yes, I think so. Have you any special leanings? Is there any particular work that you are specially keen on?'

Like a flash the thought passed through my mind: 'What a miserable creature I must be! There's nothing I particularly want to do. If he finds that out, there's an end to any interest in me, of course. Why haven't I thought of this before? What can I say?' And in the same moment, without appreciable pause, I was startled, but agreeably startled, to hear my own voice saying in quite an intelligent way: 'Well, my father wrote, of course; his work was literary work, and--newspapers, you know.'

I can answer for it that I had never till that moment given a single thought to any such notion as a literary career for myself. As well think of a prime minister's career, I should have thought. But, as I well remember, my very accent, intonation, and choice of words had all insensibly changed to fit, as I thought, the taste and habit of my new friend. And I felt it would be an extravagant folly to talk to him as I had talked with Ted, or as I talked with fellow orphans at St. Peter's, of 'pound-er-week-an'-all-found' jobs, or the 'good money' there was 'in carting,' or the fine careers that offered in connection with the construction of new railways. I had often been told you could not beat the job of cooking for a shearers' or a navvies' camp; and that a wideawake boy could earn 'good money' while learning it, as a rouseabout assistant. It seemed to me that there would have been something too absurdly incongruous in attempting to talk of such things to Mr. Rawlence. Hence, perhaps, my audacious suggestion of the literary career. There I might secure his interest. And, sure enough, I did.

'Ah! to be sure, to be sure,' he said, nodding encouragingly. 'Well, with that in view, Sydney is practically the only place, you know. Mind you, I don't say it's easy, or that one could hope to make headway quickly; but gradually, gradually, a fellow could feel his way there, if anywhere in the colony. It is undoubtedly our centre of art and literature, and culture generally. At first you might have to do quite different sort of work; but, while doing it, you know, you could be always on the lookout, always feeling your way to better things. Sydney is, at all events, a capital city, you see. There is society in Sydney, in a metropolitan sense. There is culture. One is continually meeting interesting people who are doing interesting things. It's not Paris or London, you know, but----'

He had a trick of using a radiant smile in place of articulation, by way of finishing a sentence; and I found it more eloquent than any words, and, to me, more subtly flattering. It said so clearly, and more tactfully than words: 'But you follow me, I see; I know _you_ understand me.' And I felt with rare delight that I could and did follow this fascinating man, and understand all his airy allusions to things as far beyond the purview of my present life and prospect as the heavens are beyond the earth, or as Mr. Rawlence was above an 'inmate' of St. Peter's. To a twentieth-century English artist, Mr. Rawlence might have seemed a shade crude, possibly rather pompous and affected, somewhat jejune and trite, perhaps. But our talk took place in the 'seventies of last century, in New South Wales. The Board School was a new invention in England, and in Australia there was quite a lot of bushranging still to come, and the arrival of transported convicts had but recently ceased.

I have not attempted to set down anything like the whole of the talk between the artist and myself; rather, to indicate its quality. Much of it, I dare say, was trivial, and all of it would appear so in written form. Its effect upon me was altogether out of proportion to its real significance, no doubt. It was all new talk to me, but I admit it is not easy now to understand its profoundly stirring and inspiring influence. A casual phrase or two, for example, affected my thoughts for long months afterwards. Mr. Rawlence said:

'There's an accomplishment coming into general use now that might help you enormously: phonography, shorthand-writing, you know. I am told it will mean a revolution in ordinary clerical work, and newspaper work already rests largely on it. The man who can write a hundred words a minute--I think that's about what they manage with it--will command a good post in any office, or on any newspaper, I should think. I should certainly learn shorthand, if I were you. Perhaps you could get them to introduce it here.'

I thought of Sister Agatha, and pictured myself suggesting to her the introduction of shorthand into our curriculum in the Orphanage school. And at the same moment I recalled the occasions, only yesterday, upon which I had had to 'hold out' my hand to this bitterly enthusiastic wielder of the cane. My palms had purple weals on them at that moment, tough though they were from outdoor work. I clenched my hands involuntarily, and was thankful the artist could not see their palms. That would have been a horrid humiliation; the very thought of it made me flush. No, this shorthand would hardly be introduced at St. Peter's; but I would learn it, I thought, all the same; and in due course I did, to find (again in due course) that even the acquisition of this mystery hardly represented quite the infallible key to fame and fortune that Mr. Rawlence thought it in the 'seventies.

But my attitude toward this sufficiently casual suggestion was typical of the immensely stirring and impressive influence which all the artist's talk of that day had upon me. It was undoubtedly most kindly of him to show all the interest he did in one from whom he could not by any stretch of the imagination be said to have anything to gain. We were quite old friends, he said, in his amiable way, by the time evening approached, and we began to pack up his paraphernalia. My crowning triumph came when, in leaving, he gave me his card, and wrote my full name down in his dainty little pocket-book.

'When you do get to Sydney you must come and look me up without fail. My studio is at the address on the card, and I'm generally to be found there. Mind, I shall expect a call as soon as you arrive, and we will talk things over. I'm certain you'll reach Sydney, by and by. Like London, at home, you know, it's the magnet for all the ambitious here. Good-bye, and best of good luck!'

'Mr. Charles Frederick Rawlence, Filson's House, Macquarie Street, Sydney,' was what I read on the card. And then, in very small type in one corner, 'Studio, 3rd Floor.'

I think it had been the most vividly exciting day in my life up till then; and, though still an orphan, and officially an 'inmate,' I walked among the clouds that night; a giant among dwarfs and slaves by my way of it. Youth--aye, the immemorial magic of it was alive in my blood on this spring night, if you like; and not all the Sister Agathas in all the hierarchy of Rome had power to dull the wonder of it!

VI

'If it's to be done at all, why not now? There's nothing to be gained by waiting. I'm only wasting time.'

Phrases of this sort formed the burden of all my thoughts for a number of weeks after my memorable 'day out' (as the servants say) with the Sydney artist. I no longer debated with myself at all the question as to whether or not I should leave the Orphanage. It would have seemed treachery to my new self, and in a way to Mr. Rawlence (my source of inspiration) to debate the point. It was quite certain then that I should take my fate into my own hands, leave St. Peter's, and make an attempt to win my way in the world alone.

Having no belongings, no friends to consult, no possessions of any sort or kind (save Ted's one-pound note, and a neatly bound manuscript volume of bush botany, which latter treasure had been in my pocket on the day of my father's death, and so had remained mine), there really were no preparations for me to make. And so, as I said to myself a score of times a day: 'There's nothing to be gained by waiting.' Still, I waited, some underlying vein of prudence in me, or of cowardice, offering no reason--no reason against the move, no objection, but just negation, the inertia of that which is still. But, yes, I was most certainly going, and soon. That was my last waking thought every night when I dug my head into my straw pillow, and my first waking thought when I swung my feet down to the floor. I was going out into the world to make my own way.

I was too closely engaged by the material aspect of my position to spare thoughts for its abstract quality. But, looking back from the cool greyness of later life, one sees a wistful pathos, and, too, a certain stirring fineness in the situation. And if that is so, how infinitely the pathos and the fineness are enhanced by this thought: Every day in the year, in every country in the world, some lad, somewhere, is gazing out toward life's horizon, just as I was, and telling himself, even as I did, that he must start out upon his individual journey; for him the most important of all the voyages ever undertaken since Adam and Eve set forth from their garden. I suppose it is rarely that a long distance train enters a London terminal but what one such lad steps forth from it, bent upon conquest, and, in how many cases, bound for defeat! Even of Sydney the same thing was and is true, on a numerically smaller scale.

In all lands and in all times the outsetting is essentially the same: the same high hopes and brave determinations; the same profound conviction of uniqueness; the same perfectly true and justifiable inner knowledge that, for the individual, this journey is the most important in all history. In many cases, of course, there are a mother's tears, a father's blessing, and suchlike substitutes for the stirrup-cup. And, withal, in every single case, how absolutely alone the young voyager really is, and must be! For our scientists have not as yet discovered any means of precipitating the experience gleaned in one generation (or a thousand) into the hearts and minds of another generation. Circumstances differ vastly, of course; but the central facts are the same in every case; the traveller must always be alone. The adventure upon which he sets out, be he prince or pauper, university graduate or 'inmate' of St. Peter's, is one which cannot be delegated by him, or taken from him, for it is his own life; his and his alone, to make or to mar, to perfect or to botch, to cherish or to waste, to convert into a fruitful garden, or to relinquish, when his time comes, a sour and derelict plot of barrenness.

And this tremendous undertaking, with all its infinite potentialities of good and evil, joy and agony, pride and despair, is in every country approached by somebody, by some one of our own kind, every single morning, and has been down through the ages since time began, and will be while time lasts. And there are folk who call modern life prosaic, dull, devoid of romance. Romance! Why, in the older lands there is hardly a foot of road space that has not been trodden at one time or another by youth or maid, in the crucial moment of setting out upon this amazing adventure. There are men and women who drum their fingers on a window-pane after breakfast of a morning, and yawn out their disgust at the empty dullness of life, the vacant boredom of another day. And within a mile of them, as like as not, some one is setting forth--lips compressed, brow knit--upon the great adventure. And, too, some one else is face to face with the other great adventure--the laying down of life. Somewhere close to us every single morning brings one or other, or both of these two incomparably romantic happenings.

Truly, to confess ennui, or make complaint of the dullness of life, is to confess to a sort of creeping paralysis of the mind. To be weary is comprehensible enough. Yes, God knows I can understand the existence of weariness or exhaustion. To be bored even is natural enough, if one is bored by, say, forced inaction, or obligatory action of a futile, meaningless kind. But negative boredom; to be uninterested, not because adverse circumstances confine you to this or that barren and uncongenial milieu, but because you see nothing of interest in life as a whole; because life seems to you a dull, empty, or prosaic business--that argues a kind of blindness, a poverty of imagination, which amounts to disease, and, surely, to disease of a most humiliating sort.

But this is digression of a sort I have not hitherto permitted myself in this record. To be precise, I should say, it is digression of a sort which up till now has, when detected, been religiously expunged--sent to feed my fire. Well, one has always pencils; the fire is generally at hand; we shall see. After all, a great deal of one's life is made up of digressions.

VII

In the summer-time there were sharks in Myall Creek, but I had never seen them there in the spring. It was, I think, still somewhere short of midnight when I stepped quietly out of the low window of the room I shared with seven other orphans. (The house was all of one storey.) I would have taken boots, but, excepting on visitors' Sundays, these were kept in a locked cupboard in the sisters' building. My outfit consisted of a comparatively whole pair of trousers--not those immortalised in Mr. Rawlence's sketch--a strong, short-sleeved shirt of hard, grey woollen stuff, a dilapidated waistcoat, a belt, my little book of bush flowers and trees, and my one-pound note. Oh, and an ancient grey felt hat with a large hole in the crown of it. That was all; but I dare say notable careers have been started upon less; in cash, if not in clothing.

Beside the punt I hesitated for a few moments, half inclined to cross by that obvious means, and leave Tim to do the swimming by daylight. Finally, however, I slipped off my clothes, tied them in a bundle on my head, and stepped silently into the water, closely and interestedly observed by one of the Orphanage watch-dogs, chained beside the landing-stage. If he had barked, it would have been only from desire to come with me, in which case, to save trouble, I should probably have become guilty of dog-stealing. The dogs were all good friends of mine.

The water was cold that spring night, but I was soon out of it, and using my shirt for a hard rub down in the scrub beside the creek wharf. As a precaution I had waited for a moonless night, and had made my exit with no more noise than was caused by one of the night birds or little beasts that visited our island. I had seen maps, and knew the compass bearings of the locality. My ultimate destination being Sydney, I turned to the southward, and stepped out briskly along the track leading towards Milton, and away from Werrina.

That was the simple fashion of my outsetting into the world, and for a time I gave literally no thought at all to its real significance. My recognition of it as the beginning of the great adventure of independent life was temporarily obscured by my preoccupation with its detail.

At the end of a silent hour or two, when I suppose half a dozen miles lay between myself and the Orphanage, the reflective faculties came into play again. I began to see my affair more clearly, and to see it whole, or pretty nearly so. From that point onward, I put in quite a good deal of steady thinking with regard to the future. I had two or three definite objects in view, and the first of these was to reach as quickly as possible some point not less than about fifty miles distant from Myall Creek, at which I could feel safe from any likely encounter with a chance traveller from that district.

So much accomplished my plans represented in effect a pedestrian journey to Sydney. But I recognised that the journey might occupy some time, since, in the course of it, I was to earn money and then learn shorthand; the money, by way of working capital and insurance against accidents; the shorthand, to furnish my stock-in-trade and passport in the metropolitan world. So mine was not to be exactly a holiday walking tour. Yet I do not think any one could have set out upon a holiday tour with more of zest than I brought to my tramping. My mood was not of gaiety, rather it was one attuned to high and almost solemn emprise; but, yes, I was full of zest in my walking.

An hour or so before daybreak I lay down on some dead fern at the foot of a huge and sombre red mahogany tree, where the track forked. It was partly that I wanted a rest, and partly that I was uncertain which track led to the township of Milton, where I purposed buying some food before any chance word of my flight from the Orphanage could have travelled so far. The authorities at the Orphanage were little likely to trouble themselves greatly over a runaway orphan; but I cherished a hazy idea that in my case the matter might be somehow a little different, in the same way that I had not been farmed out to any one in the district, possibly because in receiving me St. Peter's had also received some money, certainly more than could be represented by the cost of my maintenance. In any case, I did not want to take any unnecessary risks.

Two minutes after lying down I was asleep. When I waked the sun was clear of the horizon, and I was partly covered over by dead bracken. The dawn hours had been chilly, and evidently I had grappled the fern leaves to me in my sleep, as one tugs a blanket over one's shoulder, without waking, when cold. While I was chuckling to myself over this, and picking the twigs from my clothes, I heard the pistol-like crack of a bullock whip, and then, quite near at hand, the cries of a 'bullocky,' as they called the bullock-drivers thereabout, full of morning-time vehemence.

'Woa, Darkey! Gee, Roan! Baldy, gee! Nigger! Strawberry! Gee, now, Punch! I'll ----y well trim you in a minute, me gentleman. Gee, Baldy; ye ----y cow, you!'

It was thus the unseen bushman discoursed to his cattle, and in a minute or two the horns of his leaders, swaying slightly in their yoke, appeared at the bend of the track, the bolt-heads in the yoke shining like bosses of silver in the slanting rays of the new-risen sun. Clearly the wagon had been loaded overnight, for the huge tallow-wood log slung on it could hardly have been placed in its bed since sun-up.

'I'm your ----y man, if it's Milton you want,' said the driver good-humouredly, in response to my inquiries. 'I'm taking this stick into the Milton saw-mill. ----y solid stick, eh? My oath, yes; there's not enough pipe in that feller to stick a ----y needle in. No, he ought to measure up pretty well, I reckon.' A pause for expectoration, and then: 'Livin' in Milton?'

'No,' I told him, 'just travelling that way.' I flattered myself I had put just the right note of nonchalance into what I knew was a typically familiar sort of phrase. But the bullocky eyed me curiously, all the same, and I instantly made up my mind to part company with him at the earliest convenient moment.

'You travel ----y light, sonny,' he said; 'but I suppose that's the easiest ----y way, when all's said.'

'Yes,' I agreed, with fluent mendacity; 'I got tired of the swag, and I've not very far to go anyway.'

'Ah! Where might ye be makin' for, then?' At this point I realised for the first time the grave disadvantages of redundance in speech, of unnecessary verbiage. There had been no earthly need for my last words, and now that my fatal fluency had found me out, for the life of me I could not think of the name of a likely place. At length, with clumsily affected carelessness, I had to say, 'Oh, just down south a bit from Milton.'

'H'm! Port Lawson way, like?' suggested the curious bullocky.

'Yes, that's it,' I said hurriedly. 'Port Lawson way.'

'Ah, well, I've got a brother works in the ----y saw-mills there. Ye'll maybe know him--Jim Gray; big, slab-sided chap he is, with his nose sorter twisted like, where a ----y brumby colt kicked him when he was a kid. ----y good thing for him it was a brumby, or unshod, anyway; he'd a' bin in Queer Street else, I'm thinkin'. Jever meet him down that way?'

I admitted that I never had, but promised to look out for him.

'Aye, ye might,' said the bullocky. 'An', if ye see him, tell him ye met me--Bill's my name--Bill Gray, ye see--an' tell him-- Oh, tell him I said to mind his ----y p's an' q's, ye know, an' be good to his ----y self.'

I readily promised that I would, and our conversation lapsed for a time, while Bill Gray filled his pipe, cutting the tobacco on the ball of his left thumb from a good-sized black plug. For the rest of our walk together, I used extreme circumspection, and was able to confine our desultory exchanges to such safe topics as the bullocks, the weather, the roads, and so forth, all favourite subjects with bushmen. And then, as we drew near the one street of the little township, there was the saw-mill, and my opportunity for bidding good-day to a too inquisitive companion.

'So long, sonny,' said he, in response to my salutation. 'Take care of your ----y self.' (His favourite adjective had long ceased to have any meaning whatever for this good fellow. He now used it even as some ladies use inverted commas, or other commas, in writing. And sometimes, when he had occasion to use a word as long as, say, 'impossible,' he would actually drag in the meaningless expletive as an interpolation between the first and second syllables of the longer word, as though he felt it a sinful waste of opportunities to allow so many good syllables to pass unburdened by a single enunciation of his master word.)

VIII

The freedom of the open road was infinitely delightful to me after the incessant task work of St. Peter's. And perhaps this, quite as much as the policy of getting well away from the Myall Creek district, was responsible for the fact that I held on my way, with never a pause for work of any sort, through a whole week. My lodging at night cost me nothing, of course; and the expenditure of something well under a shilling a day provided a far more generous dietary than that to which St. Peter's had accustomed me. I began to lay on flesh, and to feel strength growing in me.

Mere living, the maintenance of existence, has always been cheap and easy in Australia, where an entirely outdoor life involves no hardship at any season. This fact has no doubt played an important part in the development of the Australian national character. The Australian national character is the English national character of, say, seventy or eighty years ago, subjected to isolation from all foreign influences, and to general conditions much easier and milder than those of England; given unlimited breathing-space, and freed from all pressure of confined population; cut off also, to a very great extent, from the influence of tradition and ancient institutions. For the lover of our British stock and the student of racial problems, I always think that Australia and its people offer a field of unique interest.

I did not come upon Jim Gray, the slab-sided one, in Port Lawson, so was unable to bid him mind his ensanguined p's and q's. Indeed, up to this point, I sternly repressed my social instincts, and refrained, so far as might be, from entering into talk with any one. But after the third day I began to feel that my freedom was assured, and that the chances of meeting any one from the Orphanage neighbourhood were too remote to be worth considering. My tramping became then so much the more enjoyable, for the reason that I chatted with all and sundry who showed sociable inclinations, and at that time this included practically every wayfarer one met in rural Australia. (There has been no great change in this respect.)

'The curse o' this country, my sonny boy,' said one red-bearded traveller whom I met and walked with for some miles, 'is the near-enough system. It's a great country, all right; whips o' room, good land, good climate, an' all the like o' that; but, you mark my words, the curse of it is the "near-enough" system--that an' the booze, o' course; but mainly it's the "near-enough" system, from the nail in your trousers in place of a brace button to the saplin's tied wi' green-hide in place of a gate, an' the bloomin' agitator in parliament in place of a gentleman. It's "near-enough" that crabs us, every time. Look at me! I owned a big store in Kempsey one time. You wouldn't think it to look at me, would ye? Well, an' I didn't booze, either. But it was "near-enough" in the accounts, an' "near-enough" in the buyin', an' "near-enough" in the prices, an'--here I am, barely makin' wages--worse wages than I paid counter hands--cuttin' sleepers. But I get me tucker out of it, an' me bitter 'baccy, an' that; an'---well, it's "near-enough," an' so I stick at it.'

It was on a Sunday morning of delicious brightness and virginal freshness that I reached the irregularly spreading outskirts of Dursley, a pretty little town in Gloucester county, the appearance of which, as I approached it from the highest point of the long ridge upon whose lower slopes it lay, appealed to me most strongly. Though still small Dursley is an old town, for Australia. The figures against it in the gazetteers are not imposing: 'School of Arts, 1800 vols., etc.--' But, even in the late 'seventies, it possessed that sort of smoothness, that comparative trimness and humanised air of comfort, which only the lapse of years can give. Your new settlement cannot have this attraction, no matter how prosperous or well laid out; and it is a quality which must always appeal especially to the native of an old, much-handled land, such as England. A newcomer from old Gloucester might have thought Dursley raw and new-looking enough, with its galvanised iron roofs and water-tanks, and its painted wooden houses, fences, and verandah posts. But in such a matter my standards had become largely Australian, no doubt. At all events, as I skirted the orchard fence of the most outlying residence of Dursley, I remember saying to myself aloud, as my habit was since I had taken to the road:

'Now this Dursley is the sort of place I'd like to get a job in. I'd like to live here, till----'

'H'm! Outer the mouths o' babes and suckerlings! Tssp! Well, I admire your perspicashon, youngfellermelad, anyhow, an' you can say I said so.'

At the first sound of these words, apparently launched at me from out the _Ewigkeit_, I spun round on my bare heels in the loamy sand of the track, with a moving picture thought in my mind of little gnomes in pointed caps and leathern jerkins, with diminutive miner's picks in their hands, and a fancy for the occasional bestowal of magical gifts upon wandering mortals. The picture was gone in a second, of course; and I glared at the orchard fence as though that should make it transparent.

'Higher up, sonny! Think of your arboracious ancestors, an' that sorter thing.'

This time my ears gave me truer guidance as to the direction from which the voice came, and, looking up, I saw a man reclining at his ease upon a 'possum-skin rug, which was spread on a sort of platform set between the forked branches of a giant Australian cedar, fully thirty feet from the ground, and higher than the chimneys of the house near by. The man's head and face seemed to me as round and red as any apple, and what I could see of his figure suggested at least a comfortable tendency to stoutness. Whilst not at all the sort of person who would be described as an old man, or even elderly, the owner of the mysterious voice and round, red face had clearly passed that stage at which he would be spoken of by a stranger as a young man.

'He doesn't look a bit like a tree-climber,' I thought. The girth of the great cedar prevented my seeing the species of ladder-stairway which had been built against its far side. I had breakfasted as the sun rose this fine Sunday morning, and walked no more than a couple of miles since, so that the majority of Dursley's inhabitants had probably not begun to think of breakfast yet. My 'arboracious' gentleman, anyhow, was still in his pyjamas, the pattern and colouring of which were, for that period, quite remarkably daring and bright.

'Well, young peripatater, I suppose you're wondering now if I've got a tail, hey? No, sir, I am fundamentally innocent--virginacious, in fact. But, all the same, if you like to just go on peripatating till you get to my side gate, and then come straight along to this arboracious retreat, I will a tale unfold that may appeal greatly to your matutinatal fancy. So peri along, youngfellermelad, an' I'll come down to meet ye.'

'All right, sir, I'll come,' I told him. And those were the first words I spoke to him, though he seemed already to have said a good deal to me.

By this time I had become seized with the idea that here was what is called 'a character.' I had, as it were, caught on to the whimsical oddity of the man, and liked it. Indeed, he would have been a singularly dull dog who failed to recognise this man's quaint good-humour as something jolly and kindly and well-meaning. The gentleman spoke by the aid, not alone of his mouth, but of his small, bright, twinkling eyes, his twitching, almost hairless brows, his hands and shoulders, and his whole, rosy, clean-shaved, multitudinously lined, puckered, and dimpled face. And then his words; the extraordinary manner in which he twisted and juggled with the longer and less familiar of them--arboreal, peripatetic, matutinal, and the like! He had an entirely independent and original way of pronouncing very many words, and of converting certain phrases, such as 'young fellow my lad,' into a single word of many syllables. I never met any one who could so clearly convey hyphens (or dispense with them) by intonation.

Having passed through a small gateway, I skirted the side of a comfortable-looking house of the spreading, bungalow type, with wide verandahs; and so, by way of a shaded path, arrived at the foot of the big cedar, just as the rosy-faced gentleman reached the ground from his stairway.

'Well-timed, young peripatater,' he said, with a chuckling smile. I noticed as he reached the earth that he walked with a peculiar, rolling motion of the body. He certainly was stout. There were no angles about him anywhere, nothing but rotundity. Withal, and despite the curious, rotary gait, there was a suggestion of quickness and of well-balanced lightness about all his movements. His hands and feet I thought quite remarkably small. There was a short section of the bole of a large tree, with a flattened base, lying on the ground near the stairway. The gentleman subsided upon this airily, as though it had been made of eider-down, and, crossing his pyjamed legs, beamed upon me, where I stood before him.

'Peripatacious by habit, what might your name be, youngfellermelad?'

I told him, and he repeated it after me, twice, with a distinct licking of his lips, suggestive of the act of deliberate wine-tasting.

'Good. Yes. Ah! Nicholas Freydon, Nick to his friends, no doubt. Quite a mellifluant name. Nicholas Freydon. Tssp! Very good. You'd hardly think now that my name was George Perkins, would you? Don't seem exactly right, does it?--not Perkins. But that's what it is; and it's a significacious name, too, in Dursley, let me tell you. But that's because of the meaning I've given to it. But for that, it's certainly an unnatural sort of a name for me. Perkins is a name for a thin man, with a pointed nose, no chin, a wisp of hair over his forehead, and an apron. Starch, rice, tapioca: a farinatuous name, of course. But there it is; it happens to be the name of Dursley's Omnigerentual and Omniferacious Agent, you see; and that's me. Tssp! Wharejercomefrom, Nickperry, or Peripatacious Nick?'

The idea of using precautions with or attempting to deceive this rosily rotund 'character' seemed far-fetched and absurd. I not only told him I came from Myall Creek, but also named the Orphanage.

'Ah! I'm an orphantulatory one myself. You absquatulated, I presume; a levantular movement at midnight--ran away, hey?'

I admitted it, and Mr. Perkins nodded in a pleased way, as though discovering an accomplishment in me.

'That's what I did, too; not from an orphanage, but from the paternal roof and shop. My father was a pedestrialatory specialist, a shoemaker, in fact, and brought me up for that profession. But I gave up pedestriality, finding omniferaciousness more in my line. Matter of temperment, of course--inward, like that, with an awl, you know, or outward, like that'--he swung his fat arms wide--'as an omnigerentual man of affairs: an Agent. I'm naturally omnigerentual; my father was awlicular or gimletular--like a centre-bit, y'know. Tssp! So you like Dursley, hey? Little town takes your fancy as you see it from the ridge? Kinduv cuddlesome and umbradewus, isn't it? Yes, I felt that way myself when I came here looking for pedestrial work--repairs a speciality, y' know. Whatsorterjobjerwant?'

I found that Mr. Perkins usually wound up his remarks with a question which, irrespective of its length, was generally made to sound like one word. The habit affected me as the application of a spur affects a well-fed and not unwilling steed. I did not resent it, but it made me jump. On this occasion I explained to the best of my ability that I wanted whatever sort of job I could get, but preferably one that would permit of my doing a little work on my own account of an evening.

'Ha! Applicacious and industrial--bettermentatious ambitions, hey? Quite right. No good sticking to the awlicular if you've anything of the embraceshunist in you.' He embraced his own ample bosom with wide-flung arms, as a London cabman might on a frosty morning. 'Man is naturally multivorous--when he's not a vegetable. Howjerliketerworkferme?'

'Very much indeed,' said I, rising sharply to the spur.

'H'm! Tssp!' It is not easy to convey in writing any adequate idea of this 'Tssp' sound. It seemed to be produced by pressing the tongue against the front teeth, the jaws being closed and the lips parted, and then sharply closing the lips while withdrawing the tongue inward. I am enabled to furnish this minutiae by reason of the fact that I deliberately practised Mr. Perkins's favourite habit before a looking-glass, to see how it was done. This was on the day after our first meeting. The habit was subtly characteristic of the man, because it was so suggestive of gustatory enthusiasm. He was for ever savouring the taste of life and of words, especially of words.

'Well, as it happeneth, Nickperry, your desire for a job is curiously synchronacious with my need of a handy lad. My handy lad stopped being a lad yesterday morning, was married before dinner, and is now away connubialising--honeymoon. After which he goes into partnership with his father-in-law--greens an' fish. It's generally a mistake to make partnerial arrangements with relations, Nickperry--apt to bring about a combustuous staterthings. So I wanterandyladyersee.'

'Yes, sir.'

'My name is Mister Perkins, Nickperry, not "Sir."'

'Yes, Mr. Perkins.'

'That's better. I know you don't mean to be servileacious, but that English "sir" is--we don't like it in Australia, Nickperry. You are from the Old Country, aren't you?'

I admitted it, and marvelled how Mr. Perkins could have known it.

'H'm! Tssp! Fine ol' institootion the Old Country, but cert'nly a bit servileacious. D'jerknowhowtermilkercow?'

'I've been milking four, night and morning, for over two years, s'--Mister Perkins,' I answered, with some pride.

'Good for yez, Nickperry. Whataboutgardening?'

'I worked in the garden every day at the Orphanage, s'--Mister Perkins.'

Mr. Perkins smiled even more broadly than usual. 'It's "Mister" not "Smister" Perkins, Nickperry.'

I smiled, and felt the colour rise in my face. (How I used to curse that girlish blushing habit!)

'Tssp! Well, I see you can take a joke, anyway; an' that's even more important, really, than horticulturous knowledge. Tssp! There's my breakfast bell, an' I'm not dressed. Jus' come along this way, Nickperry.'

In the neatly paved yard at the back of the house stood a well-conditioned cow, of the colour of a new-husked horse chestnut. She was peacefully chewing her cud, oblivious quite to the flight of time. Mr. Perkins ambled swiftly into the house, rolling out again, as it seemed within the second, as though he had bounced against an inner wall, and handing me a milk-pail.

'Stool over there. Jus' milk the cow for me, Nickperry. Seeyagaindreckly!'

And he was gone, having floated within doors, like a huge ball of thistledown on well-oiled castors. Next moment I heard his mellow, rotund voice again, several rooms away.

'Sossidge! Sossidge! Whajerdoin'?' Then a pause. Then--'Keep brekfus' three minutes, Sossidge; I'm not dressed.'

With a mind somewhat confused, I turned to the red cow, and my first task for Mr. Perkins. Bella--I learned subsequently that the cow, when a young heifer, had been given this name by Mr. Perkins, because she distinguished herself by bellowing incessantly for a whole night--proved a singularly amiable beast. I was light-handed, and a fair milker, I believe. Still, my hands were strange to Bella; yet she gave down her milk most generously, and, though standing in the open, without bail or leg-rope, never stirred till the foaming pail was three parts full, and her udder dry. It was something of a revelation to me, for our cows at St. Peter's had been rough scrub cattle, and had been left to pick up their own living for the most part; whereas Bella was aldermanic, a monument of placid satiety.

I very carefully deposited the pail inside the scullery entrance, and withdrew then to a respectful distance, with Bella. Would this amazing Mr. Perkins engage me? There was no doubt in my mind that I hoped he would. I had seen practically nothing of the place, and my impressions of it must all have been produced by the personality of its owner, I suppose. But it did seem to me that this establishment possessed an atmosphere of cheery kindliness and jollity such as I had never before found about any residence. The contrast between this place and St. Peter's was extraordinarily striking. I wondered what Sister Agatha would have made of Mr. Perkins, or he of Sister Agatha. 'Acidulacious' was the word he would have applied to Sister Agatha, I thought, with a boy's readiness in mimicry; and I chuckled happily to myself in the thinking.

IX

While I stood in the yard cogitating, a woman whose white-spotted blue dress was for the most part covered by a very white apron emerged from the scullery door, holding one hand over her eyes to shade them from the morning sun.

'Ha!' she said, in a managing tone; 'so you're the new lad, are you?' I smiled somewhat bashfully, this being a question I was not yet in a position to answer definitely. 'Well, you're to come into breakfast anyhow, and be sure and rub your boots on the-- Oh, you haven't any. Well, rub your feet, then. Come on! I must see to my fire.'

So I followed her through the scullery (a spacious and airy place) into the kitchen, having first carefully rubbed the dust off my horny soles on the door-mat. And then, with a boy's ready adaptability in the matter of meals, I gave a good account of myself behind a plate of bacon and eggs, with plentiful bread and butter and tea, though I had broken my fast in the bush an hour or two earlier by polishing off the sketchy remains of the previous night's supper, washed down by water from a bright creek.

Domestic capability was the quality most apparent in my breakfast companion. Her age, I should say, was nearer fifty than forty, but she was exceedingly well-preserved; and she was called, as she explained when we sat down, Mrs. Gabbitas. That in itself, I reflected, probably recommended her warmly to Mr. Perkins. (I guessed in advance that he might refer to the lady as the Gabbitacious one; and he did, more than once, in my hearing.)

'Nick Freydon's your name, I'm told. Oh, well, that's all right then.'

Mrs. Gabbitas always spoke, not alone as one having authority, but, and above all, as one who managed all affairs, things, and people within her reach, as indeed she did to a great extent. A most capable and managing woman was Mrs. Gabbitas. I adopted an air of marked deference towards her, I remember; in part from motives of policy, and partly too because her capability really impressed me. Before the bacon was finished we had become quite friendly. I had learned that my hostess had a full upper set of artificial teeth--quite a distinction in those days--and that on a certain occasion, I forget now at what exact period of her life, she had earned undying fame by being called upon by name, from the pulpit of her chapel, to rise in her place among the congregation and sing as a solo the anthem beginning: 'How beautiful upon the mountains!' I gathered now and later that this remarkable event formed in a sense the pivot upon which Mrs. Gabbitas's career turned. Having spent all her life in Australia, she had not been presented at Court; but, alone, unaccompanied, and from her place among the chapel congregation, she had, in answer to the minister's call, made one service historic by singing 'How beautiful upon the mountains!' It was a pious and pleasant memory, and I admit the story of it did add to her dignity in my eyes. Her false teeth, though admittedly a distinction at that period, did not precisely add to her dignity. They were somehow too mobile, too responsive in front to the forces of gravitation, for a talkative woman.

'Has he given you a name yet?' she asked, as we rose from the table, giving her head a jerk as she spoke in the direction of the little pantry, in which I gathered there was a revolving hatch communicating with the dining-room.

'Well, he called me "Nickperry,"' I said, 'or "Peripatacious Nick."'

'Ah! Yes, that sounds like one of his,' she said, apparently weighing the name and myself, not without approval. 'There's nothing nor nobody he hasn't got some name for. He don't miscall me to me face, for I'd allow no person to do such. But in speakin' to Missis, I've heard him refer to me with some such nonsensical words as "Gabbitular" and "Gabbitaceous," or some such rubbish, although no one wouldn't ever think such a thing of me--nobody but him, that is. But he means no harm, y'know. There's no more vice in the man than--than in Bella there.'

She pointed with a wooden spoon toward the open window, through which we could see the red cow, still contentedly chewing over the memories of her last meal.

'No, there's no harm in him, or you may be sure I wouldn't be here; but he's a great character, is Mr. Perkins; a regler case, he is, an' no mistake. Well, this won't get my kitchen cleaned up--and Sunday morning, too! You might take out that bucket of ashes for me. You'll find the heap where they go down in the little yard behind the stable. There now! That's what comes o' talkin'! If I didden forget to ask a blessin', an' you an orphan, too, I believe! F'what we've received. Lor', make us truly thangful cry-say-carmen--Off you go!'

Her eyes were screwed tightly shut while the words of the gabbled invocation passed her lips, and opened widely as, with its last mysterious syllables, she dropped the wooden spoon she had been holding and turned to her fire. The fire was always 'my' fire to worthy Mrs. Gabbitas. So was the kitchen, for that matter, the scullery, the pantry, and all the things that therein were. Indeed, she frequently spoke of 'my' dining-room table, bedrooms, silver, front hall, windows, and the like. Even the meals served to Mr. and Mrs. Perkins were, until eaten, 'my dining-room breakfast,' 'my dining-room tea,' and so forth.

On my way back from the ash-heap with Mrs. Gabbitas's bucket, I almost collided with Mr. Perkins, as he rolled swiftly and silently into view from round the end of the rustic pergola, between the house yard and the big cedar.

'Aha! The Peripatacious one! Tssp! Yes. Mrs. Perkins wants a word with you, youngfellermelad. Come on this way. She's on the front verandah.'

I found myself involuntarily seeking to emulate Mr. Perkins's remarkable method of locomotion. But I might as well have sought to mimic an albatross or a balloon. It was not only his splendid rotundity which I lacked. The difference went far beyond that. He had oiled castors running on patent ball bearings, and I was but the ordinary pedestrian youth.

We found Mrs. Perkins reclining on a couch on the front verandah, a very gaily coloured dust-rug covering the lower part of her figure. Like many people in Australia she could hardly be classified socially; or, perhaps, I should say she did not possess in any marked form the characteristics which in England are associated with this or that social grade. If there was nothing of the aristocrat about her, it might be said that she was not in the least typically 'middle-class'; and I am sure the severest critic would have hesitated to say that hers were the manners, disposition, or outlook of any 'lower' class. Yet she had married an itinerant cobbler, or at best a 'pedestrialatory specialist,' and, I am sure, without the smallest sense of taking a derogatory step.

Mrs. Perkins was the more a revelation to me perhaps, because, as it happened, Mrs. Gabbitas had said nothing whatever about her. I learned presently that she had not stood upon her feet for more than ten years. I was never told the exact nature of the disease from which she suffered, but I know she had lost permanently the use of her legs, and that she was not allowed to sit up in a chair for more than an hour at a time. She never moved anywhere without her husband. He carried her from one room to another, and at times to different parts of the garden; always very skilfully, and without the slightest appearance of exertion. I think it likely she did not weigh more than six or seven stone. Whenever I saw her carried, there was always draped about her a gaily coloured rug or large shawl; and she was for ever smiling, or actually laughing, or making some quaintly humorous little remark. I wondered sometimes if she had borrowed her playfulness in speech from her husband, or if he had borrowed from her. I do not think I ever met a happier pair.

'So here you are!' she said, as we drew near. Her tone suggested that my coming were the arrival of a very welcome and long-looked-for guest. 'You see, Nick, I am so lazy that I never go to any one; and people are so kind that every one comes to me, sooner or later.'

I experienced a desire to do something graceful and chivalrous, and did nothing, I suspect, but grin awkwardly and shuffle my toes in the dust. It seemed to me clumsy and rude to stand erect before this crippled little lady, yet impossible to adopt any other attitude. Mr. Perkins had subsided, softly as a down cushion, on the edge of the verandah. But he had no angles, and I had no curves. Mr. Perkins removed his hat and caressingly polished that glistening orb, his head, with a large rainbow-hued handkerchief.

'You see, Insect,' he said, beaming upon his wife, 'this young feller, Nickperry, an orphantual lad, as I explained, has taken a fancy to Dursley.'

'And you've taken a fancy to Nickperry, I suppose--as you call him.'

The master waved his fat arms to demonstrate his aloofness from fancies. 'Well, we want a new handy lad,' he said; 'and this peripatacious young chap comes strolling along just as Bella wants milking. The Gabbitual one says he's all right.' This is an elaborate stage aside.

'And how did Bella behave, Nick?' asked the mistress.

'She gave down her milk very nicely--madam,' I said, conscious of a blush over the matter of addressing this little lady.

'Merely a passing weakness for the servileacious, inherited from feudalising ancestors,' said Mr. Perkins in an explanatory tone to his wife. And then to me: 'This is Missis Perkins, Nickperry, not "Madam." When you want to speak to the Missis, you must always come and find her, because she don't get about much, do you, Pig-an'-Whistle?'

One of the points of difference between husband and wife, in their spoken whimsicalities, was that the man had no sense of shame and the wife had. Mr. Perkins was no respecter of persons. He would have addressed his wife as 'Blow-fly,' or 'Sossidge,' or 'Piggins,' or by any of the ridiculous names of the sort that he affected, in the presence of the queen or his own handy lad. I have overheard similar expressions of playful ribaldry upon his wife's lips many a time, but never when I was obviously and officially in their presence.

'And what about pay, Nickperry? How do you stand now on the wages question? What did the Drooper start on, Whizz?' This last question was addressed to Mrs. Perkins, whose real name, as I learned later--never once heard upon her husband's lips--was Isabel.

'Eight shillings,' replied Mrs. Perkins. 'But, of course, wages have risen a good bit since then.'

'Yes, yes; the gas of the agitators does sometimes serve to inflate wages; I'll say that for the beggars. What do you say, Nickperry?'

'Well, si--Mister Perkins----'

'He always calls me "Smister." It's a friendly way they have in England, like the eye-glass and the turned-up trousers.'

In her smile Mrs. Perkins managed to convey merriment, sympathy for me as the person chaffed, and humorous disapproval of her husband. I would gladly have worked for her for nothing, for admiration of her bright eyes.

'I was going to say that I'd be willing to work for whatever you liked, till you saw whether I suited you or not,' I managed to explain.

Mrs. Perkins nodded approvingly, and her husband said: 'That's a very fair offer. You have an engagious way with you, Nickperry; and so we'll engage you at ten bob and all found for a start. How's that, Whizkers?'

The mistress assented pleasantly, and added: 'You'll tell Mrs. Gabbitas to see to the room, George, won't you, and--and to give Nickperry what he needs? She will understand. I dare say he'd like a bath.'

I blushed red-hot at this, but Mrs. Perkins kindly refrained from looking my way, and the interview ended. Then, like a dinghy in the wake of a galleon, I followed my new employer to the rearward parts of the establishment.

X

I used to tell Heron, and others who came into my later life, that the happiest days I ever knew were the 'ten bob a week and all found' days of my handy-lad time. It was very likely true, I think; though really it is next door to impossible for any man to tell which period in his life has been the more happy; and especially is this so in the case of the type of man who finds more interest in the past than in the future. The other side of the road always will be the cleaner, the trees on the far side of the hill will always be the greener, for a great many of us. Any other time seems preferable before the present moment, to some folk; and to many, times past are in every sense superior to anything the future can have to offer.

At all events I was fortunate in the matter of my first situation, and I was contented in it, being satisfied that it was an excellent means to an end which I had decided should be very fine indeed.

I have never yet been able to make up my mind whether I am like or unlike to the majority of mankind in this: with me every phase of life, every occupation, every effort, almost every act and thought have been regarded, not upon their own merits or in relation to themselves, but as means to ends. The ends, it always appeared, would prove eminently desirable; they would give me my reward. The ends, once they were attained, would certainly bring me peace, happiness, fame, health, enjoyment, leisure, monetary gain, or whatever it was they were designed to bring. I am still uncertain whether or not the bulk of my fellow-men are similarly constituted; but I am tolerably certain that one misses a great deal in life as the result of having this kind of a mind.

To a great extent, for example, one misses whatever may be desirable in the one moment of time of which we are all sure--the present. One is not spared the worries and anxieties of the present, because they seem to have their definite bearing upon the end in view. But the good, the sound sweetness of the present, when it chances to be there, so far from cherishing and savouring every fraction of it, we spare it no more than a hurried smile in passing, as a trifling incident of our progress toward the grand end which (just then) we have in view. And how often time proves the end a thing which never actually draws one breath of life; a mere embryo, a phantom, vaporous product of our own imagination! So that for one, two, or fifty years, as the case may be, we have derived no benefit from a number of tangible good things, by reason of our strenuous pursuit of a shadow.

Is this a peculiar disease, or am I merely noting a characteristic of my own which is also a characteristic of the age in which I have lived? I wonder! It is, at all events, a way of living which involves a rather tragical waste of the good red stuff of life; and, yes, upon the whole it is a form of restless waste and extravagance which I fancy is far from rare among the thinking men and women of my time. They do not travel; they hurry from one place to another. They do not enjoy; they pursue enjoyment. They do not rest; they arrange very elaborately, cleverly, strenuously to catch rest--and miss it. Is it not possible that some of us do not live, but use up all the time at our disposal in sweating, toiling, scheming preparation for the particular sort of life we think would suit us; the kind of life we are aiming at; the end, in fact, in pursuit of which we expend and exhaust our whole share of life as a means?

Though these things strike me now, it is needless to say they formed no part of my mental outlook in Dursley.

As is often the case in Australian homes, the colony of out-buildings upon Mr. Perkins's premises at Dursley was more extensive than the parent building. Between the main house and the stable, with all its attendant minor sheds and lean-to, was a long, low-roofed wooden structure, divided into dairy, wash-house, tool-room, workshop, and, at the end farthest from the dairy, what is called a 'man's room.' This latter apartment was now my private sanctuary, entered by nobody else, unless at my invitation. I grew quite fond of this little room, which measured eight feet by twelve feet, and had a window looking down the ridge and across the creek to Dursley in its valley and the wooded hills beyond.

I had no lamp in my sanctuary, and no fireplace. But the climate of New South Wales is kindly, and, when one is used to it and one's eyes are young, the light of a single candle is surprisingly satisfying. That, at all events, was the light by which I mastered the intricacies of Pitman's system of shorthand, besides reading most of the volumes in Dursley's School of Arts library. The reading I accomplished in bed; the shorthand studies on the top of a packing-case which hailed originally from a match factory in east London, and doubtless had contained the curious little cylindrical cardboard boxes of wax vestas, stamped with a sort of tartan plaid pattern, that are seen so far as I know only in Australia, though made in England.

At first, like others who have trodden the same thorny path, I went ahead swimmingly with my shorthand, confining myself to the writing of it on the packing-case. Being at the end of the current bed-book (it was Charles Reade's _Griffith Gaunt_) I took my latest masterpiece of shorthand to bed with me one night, only to find that I could barely read one word in ten. That was a rather perturbed and unhappy night, and my progress thereafter was a somewhat slower and more laborious process.

The habit of rising with the sun was now fairly engrained in me. At about daybreak then my first duties would take me to the wood-heap, with axe and saw, and subsequently to the scullery with a heaped barrow-load of fuel for the day. Arrived there I polished the household's boots and knives, washed my hands at Mrs. Gabbitas's immaculate sink--a more scrupulously clean housewife I have yet to meet--and proceeded to the feeding and milking of Bella. Then I fed the horse, cleared out the stable, spruced myself up, and so to breakfast with 'The Gabbitular One.' Three meat meals and two snacks--'the eleven o'clock' and 'the four o'clock'--were the order of the day in this establishment. The snacks consisted of tea, which was also served at every meal, including dinner, and scones and butter; the meals included always some sort of flesh food and varying adjuncts. After the lean dietary of St. Peter's this regime seemed almost startling to me at first, a thing which could hardly be expected to last. But I adapted myself to it without difficulty or complaint, and thrived upon it greatly.

During the day my main work was the cultivation of the garden, and the care of the front lawn, in which Mr. Perkins took a very special pride and interest; chiefly, I think, because it was the foreground of his wife's daily outlook. But the routine work of the garden, which always was demanding a little more time than one had to spare for it, was subject, of course, to interruptions. I did the churning twice a week, and Mrs. Gabbitas the 'working' and 'making up' of the butter. And there were other matters, including occasional errands to the town--a message for a storekeeper, or a note for the master at his office.

Over the entrance to this office of Mr. Perkins's hung a huge board on which were boldly painted in red letters on a white ground the name of George Perkins, and the impressive words--'Dursley's Omnigerentual and Omniferacious Agent.' It really was a remarkable notice-board, and residents invariably pointed it out to visitors as one of the sights of the town. Indeed, Dursley was very proud of its Omniferacious Agent, who for three successive years now had been also its mayor.

But I gathered from veteran gossips in the town's one street that this had not always been so. Mr. Perkins had originally arrived in the town but very slightly more burdened with worldly gear than I was. The tools of his craft as a cobbler had left room enough in one bundle for the rest of his property. Dursley did not want a cobbler at that time, I gathered; so in this respect Mr. Perkins had been less fortunate than I was; for when I arrived some one had wanted a handy lad. However, what proved more to the point was the fact that the cobbler did want Dursley. He stayed long enough to teach the townsfolk to appreciate him as a cobbler of boots--and of affairs, of threatened legal proceedings, frayed friendships, and the like. And then, for some months prior to a general election, the cobbler edited the local weekly newspaper, and was largely instrumental in returning the Dursley-born candidate to parliament, in place of an interfering upstart from Kempsey way. It was not at all a question of politics, but of Dursley and its interests.

By this time Mr. Perkins had gone some way towards Omniferacious Agenthood. He had very successfully negotiated sundry sales and purchases for townsmen, who shared that disinclination to call in conventionally recognised professional assistance which I have often noticed in rural Australia. Then he married the daughter of the newspaper proprietor, whose brother was one of Dursley's leading storekeepers. Everybody now liked him, except a few crotchety or petty souls, who, not understanding him, suspected him of ridiculing or exposing them in some way, and in any case mistrusted his jollity, his success, and his popularity. Even in the beginning, before the famous notice-board was thought of, and while Mr. Perkins's work was yet 'awlicular,' I gathered that several old residents had set their faces firmly against this invincibly merry fellow, and done all they could to 'keep him in his place.'

And now he bought and sold for them: their houses, land, timber, fruit, produce, live-stock, and property of every sort and kind, making a larger income than most of them in the doing of it, and accomplishing all this purely by force of his personality. He succeeded where others failed, because so few could help liking him; and if he failed but seldom in anything he undertook, that was probably due in part to the fact that he never thought and never spoke of failure, preferring always as topics more cheerful matters. His wife had become a permanent invalid very shortly after their marriage, yet no person could possibly have made the mistake of thinking George Perkins's marriage a failure. I doubt if a happier married pair could have been found in Australia.

The meal we called tea (though we drank tea at every other meal) was partaken of by Mrs. Gabbitas and myself at half-past five, and by Mr. and Mrs. Perkins at six o'clock. I was given to understand at the outset that no work was expected of me after tea. Once or twice of a summer evening I went out into the garden to perform some trifling task I had overlooked, and upon being seen there by Mr. Perkins was saluted with some such remark as:

'Stealing time, Nickperry, stealing time! You an' me'll fall out, my friend, if you can't manage to keep proper working hours. Applicatiousness is all very well, but stealing time after tea is gluttish and greedular, and must be put down with an iron hand, with an iron hand, Nickperry. Tssp! Howzashorthandgetnon?'

Before expelling the last interrogative omnibus word, he would clench one fat fist and knead the air downward with it, to illustrate the process of putting down greediness with an iron hand.

I saw comparatively little of him, of course, owing to his preoccupation with business, his own and that of Dursley and most of its inhabitants; but we were excellent good friends, and it was rarely that he missed his Sunday morning walk round the whole place with me, when my week's work would be passed in more or less humorous review, and the programme for the next week discussed. After this tour of inspection I generally went to church, and the afternoon I almost invariably spent in my room over the packing-case. That is a period which many people give to letter-writing, and it is queer to recall the fact that, so far as I can remember, I had written only two letters in my life up to this period--one to a Sydney bookseller, whose address I got from Mr. Perkins, and one to Mr. Rawlence, the Sydney artist, to tell him of my present position, and to say that I had made a start upon shorthand. His kindly and encouraging reply was, I think, the first letter I ever received through the post. But I now began to write letters by the score, addressed to imaginary correspondents, and based in style upon my studies of correspondence in various books. These epistles, however, all ended their brief careers under the kindling wood in Mrs. Gabbitas's kitchen grate.

'Applicatious and industrial, with bettermentatious ambitions,' Mr. Perkins had said of me within a few moments of our first meeting, and at this period I think I justified the sense of his comment. My daily work was pleasant enough, of course, healthy and not fatiguing. Still, it was perhaps odd in a youth of my age that I should have had no desire for recreation or amusement. My study of shorthand did not interest me in the faintest degree; but I was greatly interested by my growing mastery of it, because I thought of the mastery of shorthand, as Mr. Rawlence had described it, as a very valuable means to an end, to various ends. I thought of it, in short, as the key which should open Sydney's doors to me; for, happy as my life was in Dursley, I never regarded it in any other light than as a useful preliminary to the next stage of my career. And that again, from all I have since been told, was hardly an attitude proper to my years.

It certainly was not due to any conscious discontent with my life and work in Dursley. I must suppose it was the beginning of that restless temperamental itch which all through life has made me regard everything I did as no more than the necessary prelude to some more or less vague thing I meant presently to do, which should be much better worth doing. A praiseworthy doctrine I have heard it called. It may be. But I would like to be able to warn all and sundry who cultivate or inculcate it in this present century, that the margin between it and the wastefully extravagant body and soul-devouring restlessness which I sometimes think the key-note of our time--the margin is a perilously slender one.

XI

Every day the _Sydney Morning Herald_ was delivered at the Perkins's establishment, and every evening it reached the kitchen at tea-time. Mrs. Gabbitas regarded it as a very useful journal for fire-lighting purposes, but having no other interest in it was quite agreeable to its being out-of-date by one day when it reached her hands. Thus the daily newspaper became my perquisite each evening, to be returned faithfully in the morning with the day's supply of fuel, in order that it might duly fulfil its higher and more serviceable destiny in Mrs. Gabbitas's stove.

For quite a long time I never scanned the news columns of that really admirable newspaper. I might have thought that their perusal would have been helpful to me, especially as I cherished vague ideas of one day earning my living in a newspaper office. But, for the time, my mind was too much occupied with thoughts of another means to an end--shorthand. The longest chunks of unbroken letterpress were the leading articles. For months I never looked beyond them, and never stopped short of copying out at least one column of them, and often more, especially in those misguided early days before I awoke to the stern necessity of reading over every written line of shorthand.

I am afraid the leader-writers' eloquence and style--real and ever-present features in this journal's pages--were entirely wasted upon me. I copied them with slavish lack of thought, intent only on my shorthand, and most generally upon the physical difficulty of keeping my eyes open. I invariably fell asleep three or four times before finishing my allotted task, and only managed to keep awake for the reading of it by standing erect beside the packing-case and reading aloud. How it would have astonished those gifted leader-writers if they could have walked past, overheard me, and recognised in my halting, drowsy declamation their own well-rounded periods!

As I read the last word my spirits always rose instantly, and my craving for sleep left me. With keen anticipatory pleasure I would fold up the newspaper ready for the morning, take one look out from the doorway to note the weather, shed my clothes, snuff the candle, and climb luxuriously into bed with the current book, whatever it might be. No newspaper for me. This was real reading, and while I read in bed (travel, biography, and fiction) I lived exclusively in the life my author depicted. Vanished utterly for me were Dursley and its worthy folk, and Australia too for that matter. Practically all the books I read carried me to the Old World, and most often to England, which for me was rapidly becoming a synonym for romance, charm, interest, culture, and all the good things of which one dreams. Everything desirable, and not noticeable or recognised as being in my daily life, I grew gradually to think of as being part and parcel of English life. I did not as yet long to go to England. One does not long to visit the moon. But when some well-wrought piece of atmosphere, some happy turn of speech, some inspiring glimpse of high and noble motives or tender devotion, caught and held me, in a book, I would sigh quietly and say to myself:

'Ah, yes; in England!'

Looking back upon it, I am rather pleased with myself for the stubborn persistence with which I slogged away at the shorthand; because it never once touched my interest. For me, it was a veritable treadmill. And, for that reason, I suppose, I was never really good at it. I have no doubt whatever that it had real value for me as a disciplinary exercise.

And then my candle would gutter and expire. I have sometimes, by means of sitting up in bed, holding the book high, and using great concentration, devoured a whole chapter between the first sputtering sound of the candle's death-rattle and the moment of its actual demise. Indeed, I have more than once finished a chapter, when within half a page of it, by matchlight. But that, of course, was gross extravagance. Our candles seemed to me abominably short, and I once tried to seduce Mrs. Gabbitas into allowing me two at a time; but she, good soul, wisely said that one was more than I had any right to burn in an evening, and I was too miserly to buy them for myself.

Yes, it seems horribly unnatural in a youth, but I am afraid I was rather miserly at that time. I wanted passionately to do various things. Precisely what, I had never so far thought out. But I did not desire the less ardently for that. I suppose the thing I wanted was to 'better myself,' as the servants say. Was I not a servant? Without ever reasoning the matter out, I felt strongly that the possession of some money, a certain store, was very necessary to my well-being; that in some mysterious way it would add immensely to my chances, to my strength in the world; that it would put me on a footing superior to that I had at present. I even thought of it, in my innocence, as Capital. Many of my musings used to begin with: 'If a fellow has Capital'--and I believed that if he had not this magic talisman his position was very different and inferior. I thought of the world's hewers of wood and drawers of water as being the folk who had no Capital; the others as the people who had somehow acquired possession of the talisman. And I suppose I wanted to be of the company of the others.

Ten shillings a week means twenty-six pounds a year; and I very well remember that on the first anniversary of my entering Mr. Perkins's employ, my Government Savings Bank book showed a balance to my credit of twenty-two pounds three and fourpence. This sum, I decided, might fairly rank as Capital; it really merited the august name, I felt, being actually above the sum of twenty pounds. Eighteen pounds was a respectable nest-egg. Yes, but twenty-three [sic] pounds three and fourpence--that was Capital; and I now definitely took rank, however humbly, among the people who possessed the talisman. I realised very well that I was poor; that this sum of money was not a large one. Still, it was Capital, and, as such, it gave me a deal of satisfaction, and more of confidence than I could have had without it. I am certain of that. What a pity it is that one cannot always, later in life, obtain the same secure and confident feeling by virtue of possessing twenty pounds!

This meant that I had spent less than four pounds in the year. But no; Mr. Perkins gave me ten shillings, and Mrs. Perkins five shillings, at Christmas time. Also, I won ten shillings as a prize in a competition arranged by the _Dursley Chronicle_. It was for the best five hundred word description of an Australian scene, and I described Livorno Bay and its derelict; and, as I thought at the time--quite mistakenly, I am sure--described them rather well. Apart from a book or two I had bought practically nothing, save boots and socks and a Sunday suit of clothes. Mrs. Perkins had kindly supplied quite a stock of shirts for me, by means of operations performed upon old shirts of her husband's. My Sunday suit of clothes had occupied me greatly for some weeks. I had never before bought clothing of any kind. After two or three visits to the store, and many talks at mealtimes with Mrs. Gabbitas, I finally decided upon blue serge.

'It do show the dust, but it don't show the wear so much as the rest of 'em,' was the Gabbitular verdict which finally settled this momentous business. A tie to match was given in with the suit, a concession which I owed entirely to Mrs. Gabbitas's determined enterprise. The tie was of satin, and, taken in conjunction with a neatly arranged wad of silk handkerchief, extraordinarily variegated in colour (Mrs. Gabbitas's present), protruding from the breast-pocket of the new coat, it produced on the first Sunday after its purchase an effect which I found at once arresting and sedately rich. My looking-glass was not more than six inches square, but, by propping it up on a chair, and receding from it gradually, I was able to obtain a very fair view of my trousers; while, by replacing it on the wall, and observing my reflection carefully from different angles, I was able to judge of most parts of the coat and waistcoat.

After a good deal of thought, I decided that the best effect was obtained by fastening the top button of the coat, turning back one lower corner with careful negligence, and keeping it there by holding one hand in my trouser pocket. In that order, then, I interviewed Mrs. Gabbitas in the scullery, to receive her congratulations before proceeding to church. Altogether, it was a day of pleasing excitement; but, greatly though it intrigued me, the purchase left me as much a miser as ever, my only other extravagance for a long time being a cream-coloured parasol--my present to Mrs. Gabbitas; and---I may as well confess it--I could not have brought myself to buy that, but for the fact that it was called 'slightly shop-soiled,' and had been 'marked down' from 8s. 11d. to 4s. 10 1/2d.

Yes, for a youth of sixteen years, I fear it must be admitted that I was unnaturally parsimonious, and a good deal of what schoolboys used to call a smug and a swatter. It really was curious, because I do not recall that I had any ambition to be actually rich. Mr. Smiles and his _Self Help_ would have left me cold if I had read that classic. I indulged no Whittingtonian dreams of knighthood, mayoral chains, vast commercial or financial operations, or anything of that sort. The things that interested me were largely unreal. I was immensely appealed to, I remember, by a phase in the career of Charles Reade's _Griffith Gaunt_, in which that gentleman lived incognito for awhile in a remote rural inn, and wooed (if he did not actually marry) the buxom daughter of the house, while his real wife was being accused of having murdered him. I think that was the way of it. I know the sojourn in that isolated inn--I pictured its lichen-grown walls; a place that would be approached quite nearly in the stilly night by wild woodland creatures--appealed to me as a wholly delightful episode.

I never had a dream of commercial triumphs. I did not think of fame. For what was I striving? And why did I so assiduously save? It is not easy to answer these questions. I find the thing puzzles me a good deal. There was my means-to-an-end attitude; but what was the precise end in view? If one comes to that I have been striving all my life long, and to what end? I know this, that in the midst of my physical content as a handy lad in a comfortable home, I had at least thought definitely of my future up to a certain point. I had told myself that there were two kinds of people in the world: the hewers of wood and drawers of water, earning a mere living, as I was earning mine, by the labour of their hands; and the others. I knew very little of what the others did, and had no very definite plan or desire to follow, myself, any of their occupations. But I did know that I wished to live in their division of the community. I wished to be one of those others. I should be unworthy of my father if I did not presently take my place among those others. And, I suppose, the only practical steps in that direction which I knew of and could take were the saving of my wages and the study of shorthand. I think that was about the way of it. And if my diligence with regard to these two matters may be taken as the measure of my desire to join the ranks of the others, it is safe to say I must have desired it very much indeed.

XII

Every one has noticed the odd vividness with which certain apparently unmemorable episodes stand out among one's recollections, though the details of far more important occasions have become merged in the huge and nebulous mist of the things one has forgotten. (Memory is a longish gallery, but the mass of that which is unremembered, how enormous this is!)

I recall a Sunday evening in Dursley. I had been to church, a rare thing for me, of an evening, to hear a strange, visiting parson; a man who had done missionary work in east London and in Northern Queensland. I remember nothing that he said, and nothing occurred that night to make it memorable for me. And yet ...

The aftermath of the sunset beyond Dursley valley was very beautiful. It often was. Venus shone out with mellow brilliance a little to the right of the church. The air was full of bush scents, and somewhere, not far from where I stood, dead brushwood was burning and diffusing abroad the aromatic pungency that fire draws from eucalyptus leaves.

Gradually, I was overcome by that sense of the infinitely romantic potentialities of life which I suppose overpowers all young people at times; and, more especially, rather lonely young people. The main events of my short life filed past before me in review against the background of an exquisitely melancholy evening sky, illumined by one perfect star. Even this dim light was further softened for me presently by the moisture that gathered in my eyes; tears that pricked with a pain that was almost intolerably sweet. I recalled how, as a child, I had longed to see strange and far-off lands; how I had bragged to servants and childish companions that I would travel. And then, how I had travelled--the _Ariadne_, my companions, my father, the derelict, Livorno Bay. And then, the blow that cut off all I had held by, and made of me an unconsidered scrap, owning nothing, and owned by nobody.

I had been very miserable at the Orphanage. Yes, there was distinct pleasure in recalling and weighing the sum of my unhappiness at St. Peter's. I had longed to be quit of it; I had willed to be out in the open world, free to make what I could of my own life. And, behold, I was free. My will had accomplished this, had brushed aside the restraining bonds of the whole organisation supervised by Father O'Malley. I, a friendless, bare-legged orphan had done this, because I desired to do it. And now I was a recognised and respectable unit in a free community, earning and paying my way with the best. (I was pleasantly conscious of my blue serge suit, the satin tie, and the multi-coloured silk handkerchief.) I was possessed of Capital--more than twenty pounds; quite a substantial little sum in excess of twenty pounds, even without the interest shortly to be added thereto. Finally, that very evening, had I not been addressed as 'Mister Freydon,' I, the erstwhile bare-footed 'inmate' of St. Peter's? There was nothing of bathos, nothing in the least ludicrous, to me in this last reflection.

'It's nothing, of course,' I told myself, with proud deprecation; 'and he's only a shop assistant. But there it is. It does show something after all. And, besides, he is a member of the School of Arts Committee!'

The 'he' in this case was, of course, the person who had shown discernment enough to address me as 'Mister Freydon.' And, deprecate as I might, the thing had given me a thrill of deep and real satisfaction. Merely recalling the sound of it added to the exaltation of my mood, and to my obsession by the wonder, the romance of the various transitions of my life.

The hazards of life, the wonder of it all--this it was that filled my mind. How would Ted be struck by it? I thought. And there and then I composed in my mind the letter which should accompany my return of the pound he had given me when I could find an address to which it could be sent. There should be no flinching here, no blinking the exact truth. I may have been an insufferable young prig and snob. Very likely I was. As I recall it that letter, composed while I gazed across the valley at the evening star, was informed by a sort of easy condescension and friendly patronage. Grateful, yes, but with a faint hint, too, that Ted had been rather fortunate, a little honoured perhaps in having enjoyed the privilege of assisting, however slightly, in the launch of my career. At one time I had gladly regarded it as a present. That, it seemed, was a blunder of my remote infancy. Honest Ted's pound was a loan, of course, and like any other honourable man I should naturally repay the loan!

Musing in this wise I turned away from the evening star, and walked very slowly past the dairy and the wash-house to my own little room. Now the odd thing was that, though I seemed to have given not one single thought to the future, though I seemed to have made no plan, but, on the contrary, to have confined myself exclusively to the idlest sort of musing upon the past, yet, as I walked into my dark room, I knew that I had definitely decided to leave Dursley at once, and take the next step in my career. I actually whispered to myself:

'It's a good little room. I shall miss this room. I shall often think of the nights I've spent here.'

All this, as though my few belongings had been packed, and I had arranged to depart next morning; though, in fact, I had not given a single conscious thought to the matter of leaving Dursley until I turned my back on the evening star.

Next morning at breakfast I told Mrs. Gabbitas I meant to leave and make for Sydney; and Mrs. Gabbitas gave me to understand that, with all their infinite varieties of foolishness, most young fellows shared one idiosyncrasy in common: they none of them had sense enough to know when they were well off. I spoke of my shorthand, and said I had not been working at it for nothing. Mrs. Gabbitas sniffed, and expressed very plainly the doubts she felt about shorthand ever providing me with meals of the kind I enjoyed at her kitchen table.

'I suppose the fact is gardening isn't good enough for you, and you want to be a gentleman,' the good soul said, with sounding irony. And, whilst I made some modestly deprecatory sound in reply, my thoughts said: 'You are precisely right.'

With news in hand I have no doubt Mrs. Gabbitas took an early opportunity of a chat with Mrs. Perkins. At all events I had no sooner got my lawn-mower to work that morning than the mistress called me to her where she lay on the verandah.

'Is it true we're going to lose you, Nick?' she said very kindly. And, as my irritating way still was, I blushed confusedly as I endorsed the report.

'Well, of course, we knew we should, sooner or later; and, though we'll be sorry to lose you, you are right to go; quite right. I am sure of that, and so is Geo--so is Mr. Perkins. But have you got a situation to go to, Nick?'

I told her I had not, and that I did not think I could secure a berth in Sydney while I was still in Dursley.

'No, no, perhaps not,' she said musingly. 'You must talk to Mr. Perkins about it, and I will, too. What made you decide on going now, Nick?'

'I--I don't know,' I replied awkwardly. And then the sweet kindliness of her face emboldened me to add: 'I was just thinking last night--thinking about my life as I looked at the sky where the sunset had been, and--somehow, I found I was decided.' Then, as if to justify if possible the exceeding lameness of my explanation: 'You see, Mrs. Perkins, I've got the hang of the shorthand pretty well now,' I added.

She nodded sympathetically. 'Well, I'm sure you'll succeed, Nick, I'm sure you will; for you're a good lad, and very persevering. The main thing is being a good lad, Nick; that's the main thing. It's sad for you, having lost your parents, and--and everything. But when you go away, Nick, just try to think of me as if I were your mother, will you? I'll be thinking quite a lot of you, you know. Don't you go and fancy there's nobody cares about you. We shall all be thinking a lot about you. And, Nick, if ever you find yourself in any trouble, if you begin to feel you're going wrong in any way, if you feel like doing anything you know is wrong, or if you feel downhearted and lonesome--you just get into a train and come to Dursley, Nick. Come straight here to me, and tell me everything about it, and--and I think I'll be able to help you. I'll try, anyhow; and you'll know I should want to. And if it isn't easy to come tell me just the same; write and tell me all about it. Promise me that, Nick.'

I promised her. She held out her white, thin hand and clasped my hard hand in it; and I went off to my mowing very conscious of my eyes because they smarted and pricked, but little indebted to them because they failed to show me anything more definite than a blur of greenery at my feet, and a blur of sunlight above.

A fortnight elapsed before I did really leave that place; but for me most of the emotion of leaving, of parting with my kindly employers and friends, and with pretty, peaceful Dursley, was epitomised in that little conversation on the verandah with Mrs. Perkins. I know now that there are many other sweet and kindly women in the world. At that time no one among them had ever been so sweet and kind to me.

XIII

When I stepped out of the train at Redfern Station in Sydney, I carried all my worldly belongings in a much worn carpet-bag which had been given me by Mr. Perkins. Its weight did not at all suggest to me the need of obtaining a porter's services, and hardly would have done so even if I had been accustomed to engaging assistance of the sort. Stepping out with my bag into the bustle of the capital city I walked, as one who knew his way, to where the noisy and malodorous old steam tram-cars started, and made my way by tram to Circular Quay. (I had had my directions in Dursley.) Here I boarded a ferry-boat, and at the cost of one penny was carried across the shining waters of the harbour to North Shore. Half an hour later I had mounted the hill, found Mill Street and Bay View Villa, and actually become a boarder and a lodger there, with a latch-key of my own.

The landlady having left the bedroom to which she had escorted me, my carefully sustained nonchalance fell from me; I turned the key in the door, and sat down on the edge of my bed with a long-drawn sigh. The celerity, the extraordinary swiftness of the whole business left me almost breathless.

'Yesterday,' I told myself, as one recounting a miracle, 'I was planting out young tomatoes in Mr. Perkins's garden in Dursley. Only a few minutes ago I was still in the train. And now--now I'm a lodger, and this is my room, and--I'm a lodger!'

I did not seem able to get beyond that just then, though later on, with a recollection of a certain passage in a favourite novel, I tried the sound, in a whisper, of:

'Mr. Nicholas Freydon was now comfortably installed in rooms on the shady side of--North Shore.' At the same time I ran over a few variants upon such easy phrases as: 'My rooms at North Shore,' 'Snug quarters,' 'My boarding-house,' 'My landlady,' and the like.

One must remember that I was less than two years distant from St. Peter's and from Sister Agatha and her cane.

There were two beds in my room; one small and the other very small. I was sitting on the very small one. The other belonged to Mr. William Smith, whose real name might quite possibly have been something else. For already, though I had not seen him, I had gathered that my room-mate was an elderly man with a history, of which this much was generally admitted: that he had seen much better days, and was a married man separated from his wife.

'But a pleasanter, kinder-hearted, nicer-spoken gentleman you couldn't wish to meet, that I will say,' Mrs. Hastings, the landlady, had told me. 'Which,' she added, after a pause given to reflection, with eyes downcast, 'if he was otherwise I should not've thought of letting a share of his room to anybody with recommendations from me nephew in Dursley--not likely. No, nor for that matter, of havin' him in my house at all.'

My landlady was an aunt of that Mr. Jokram who had earned distinction (apart from his membership of the School of Arts Committee) by being the first to address me as 'Mister Freydon.' This good man had taken a most friendly interest in my outsetting, and had written off at once to his aunt to know if she could include me among her boarders. Mrs. Hastings had explained that she was 'Full up as per usual, but if your gentleman friend would care to share Mr. Smith's bedroom, him being as quiet and respectable a gentleman as walks, it will be easy to put in another bed.'

This was before any mention had been made of terms. These, we subsequently learned, ranged from a minimum of 17s. 6d. per week, including light and use of bath. Later, the nephew was able to obtain special concessions for me, as the result of which I had the opportunity of securing all the amenities of Mrs. Hastings's refined home, including a share of Mr. Smith's room, and such plain washing as did not call for the use of starch--all for the very moderate charge of 16s. weekly.

Thus it was that, although a stranger and without friends in Sydney, I was able to go direct into my new quarters, without any loss of time or money; an important consideration even for a capitalist whose fortune at this time amounted to something nearer thirty than twenty pounds. (Mr. Perkins had given me an extra month's wages. Mrs. Perkins had supplemented this by half a sovereign, six pairs of socks, three linen shirts, and half a dozen collars; and Mrs. Gabbitas had given me a brand new Bible and Prayer-book, with ornate bindings and perfectly blinding type, and another of the silk handkerchiefs coloured like a tropical sunset.)

'I shall not be in to tea this evening, Mrs. Hastings, I said, with fine carelessness, as I left the house, after unpacking my belongings and paying a visit to the bathroom, an apartment formed by taking in a section of the back verandah. (The bath was of the same material as the verandah roof--galvanised iron.) 'I've got some business in Sydney that will keep me rather late.'

The good woman rather pierced my carefully assumed guise of nonchalance by the smile with which she said: 'Oh, very well, Mr. Freydon; I hope you'll not be kept too late--by business.'

'How in the world did she guess?' I thought as I walked down to the ferry. It may be that the virus of city life had in some queer way already entered my veins. Here was I, the parsimonious 'handy lad,' who had been saving ninety per cent. of my wages and never indulging myself in any way, actually contemplating the purchase of an evening meal in Sydney, while becoming indebted for an evening meal I should never eat in North Shore; to say nothing of making deceitful remarks about being detained by business, when I had deliberately made up my mind to postpone all business until the next day. Truly, I was making an ominous start in the new life; or so my twitching conscience told me, as I sat enjoying the harbour view from the deck of the ferry-boat which took me to Circular Quay.

My notion of dissipation and extravagance would have proved amusing to the bloods of that day, and merely incredible to those of the present time. There was an unnecessary twopence for the ferry--admitting the whole business to have been unnecessary. There was sixpence for a meal, consisting of tea and a portentous allowance of scones with butter. There was threepence for a packet of cigarettes ('colonial' tobacco), the first I had ever smoked, and a purchase which had actually been decided upon some days previously. Finally, there was fourpence for a glass of colonial wine in a George Street wine-shop; and this also, like the rest of the outing, had been practically decided upon before I left Dursley. But with regard to the wine there had been reservations. The cigarettes were certainly to be tried. The wine was to be had if circumstances proved favourable, and such a plunge seemed at the time desirable. It did; and so I may suppose the outing was successful.

During my wanderings up and down the city streets, I examined carefully the vestibules of various places of amusement--rather dingy most of them were at that date--but had no serious thought of penetrating further. The shops, the road traffic, and the people intrigued me greatly, but especially the people, the unending streams of lounging men, women, and children. Some, no doubt, were on business bent; but the majority appeared to me to take their walking very easily, and every one seemed to be chattering. My life since as a child I left England had all been spent in sparsely populated rural surroundings, and the noisy bustle of Sydney impressed me very much, as I imagine the Strand would impress a Dartmoor lad, born and bred, on his first visit to London.

It did not oppress me at all. On the contrary, I felt pleasantly stimulated by it. Life here seemed very clearly and emphatically articulate; it marched past me in the streets to a stirring strain. There were no pauses, no silences, no waiting. And then, too, one felt that things were happening all the time. The atmosphere was full of stir and bustle. Showy horses and carriages went spanking past one; cabs were pulled up with a jerk, and busily talking men clambered out from them, carelessly handing silver to the driver, as though it were a thing of no consequence, and passing from one's sight within doors, waving cigars and talking, talking all the time. Obviously, big things were toward; not one to-day and one to-morrow, but every hour in every street. Fortunes were being made and lost; great enterprises planned and launched; great crimes, too, I supposed; and crucial meetings and partings.

Yes, this was the very tide of life, one felt; and with what pulsing, irresistible strength it ebbed and flowed along the city highways! Among all these thousands of passers-by no one guessed how closely and with what inquisitive interest I was observing them. I suppose I must have covered eight or ten miles of pavement before walking self-consciously into that wine-shop, and sitting down beside a little metal table. I know now that, with me, nervousness generally takes the form of marked apparent nonchalance. Doubtless, this is due to concentrated effort in my youth to produce this effect. I did not know the name of a single Australian wine; but I remembered some enthusiastic comment of my father's upon the 'admirable red wine of the country,' so I ordered a glass of red wine, and, with an amused stare, the youth in attendance served me.

Like many of the wines of the country it was fairly potent stuff, and rather sweet than otherwise, probably an Australian port. I sipped it with the air of one who generally devoted a good portion of his evenings to such dalliance, and ate several of the thin biscuits which lay in a plate on the table. Meanwhile, I observed closely the other sippers. They were all in couples, and the snatches of their conversation which I heard struck me as extraordinarily dramatic in substance; most romantic, I thought, and very different from the leisurely, languid gossip of those who draw patterns in the dust with their clasp-knives, and converse chiefly about 'baldy-faced steers,' 'good feed,' 'heavy bits o' road,' and the like, with generous intervals of say ten or twelve minutes between observations. These folk in the wine-shop, on the contrary, tripped over one another in their talk; their hands and shoulders and brows all played a part, as well as their lips, and their glances were charged with penetrant meaning.

As I made my way gradually down to Circular Quay and the ferry, some one stepped out athwart my path from a shadowy doorway, and I had a vision of straw-coloured hair, pale skin, scarlet lips, a woman's figure.

'Going home, dear? What about coming with me? Come on, de-ear!'

Somehow I knew all about it. Not from talk, I am sure. Possibly from reading; possibly by instinct. I felt as though the poor creature had hit me across the face with a hot iron. I tried to answer her, but could not. She barred my path, one hand on my arm. It was no use; I could not get words out. Those waiting seconds were horrible. And then I turned and fairly ran from her, a rather hoarse laugh pursuing me among the shadows as I went.

It was horrible, and affected me for hours. But it did not spoil my outing. No, I think on the whole it added to the general excitation. I had a sense of having stepped right out into the deep waters of life, of being in the current. The drama of life was touching me now; its sombre and tragical side as well as the rest of it.

'This really is life,' I told myself as the ferry bore me among twinkling lights across the harbour. 'This is the big world, and Dursley hardly was.'

It stirred me deeply. The harbour itself; the dim, mysterious outlines of ships, the dancing water, the sense of connection with the world outside Australia, the very latch-key in my pocket, and the thought that I would presently be going to bed at my lodgings, in a room shared by an experienced and rather mysterious man, with a past; all combined to produce in me a stirring alertness to the adventurous interest of life.

XIV

One of the odd things about that first evening of mine in Sydney was that it introduced me to the tobacco habit, one of the few indulgences which I have never at any time since relinquished. I smoked several cigarettes that evening, with steadily increasing satisfaction. And, on the following day, acting on the advice of my room-mate, Mr. Smith, I bought a shilling briar pipe and a sixpenny plug of black tobacco as a week's allowance. From that point my current outgoings were increased by just sixpence per week, no less, and for a considerable period, no more.

For some days, at least, and it may have been for longer, Mr. William Smith became the mentor to whom I owed the most of such urban sophistication as I acquired. He was a very kindly and practical mentor, worldly, but in many respects not a bad adviser for such a lad so situated. When I recall the stark ugliness of his views and advice to me regarding a young man's needs and attitude generally where the opposite sex was concerned, I suppose I must admit that a moralist would have viewed my tutor with horror. But, particularly at that period, I am not sure that the average man of the world, in any walk of life, would have differed very much from Mr. Smith in this particular matter. One could imagine some quite worthy colonels of regiments giving not wholly dissimilar counsel to a youngster, I think.

Morning and evening Mr. Smith applied some sort of cosmetic to his fine grey moustache, which kept its ends like needles. He always wore white or biscuit-coloured waistcoats, and was scrupulously particular about his linen. He generally had an air of being fresh from his bath. His thin hair was never disarranged, and his mood seemed to be cheerfully serene. Summer heats drew plentiful perspiration from him, but no sign of languor or irritation. On Sunday mornings he stayed in bed till ten-thirty, with the _Sydney Bulletin_, and on the stroke of eleven o'clock he invariably entered the church at the corner of Mill Street. I used to marvel greatly at this, because he never missed his bath, and his Sunday morning appearance gave the impression that his toilet had received the most elaborate attention. He carried an ivory crutch-handled malacca walking-stick, and in church I used to think of him as closely resembling Colonel Newcome. His voice was a mellow baritone, he never missed any of the responses; and the odour which hung about him of soap and water, cosmetic, light yellow kid gloves, and good tobacco--he smoked a golden plug, very superior to my cheap, dark stuff--seemed to me at that time richly suggestive of luxury, sophistication, distinction, and knowledge of affairs.

Many years have passed since I set eyes on Mr. Smith, and no doubt he has long since been gathered to his fathers; but I believe I am right in saying that his was a rather remarkable character. I know now that he really was a dipsomaniac of a somewhat unusual kind. At ordinary times he touched no stimulant of any sort. But at intervals of about three months he disappeared, quite regularly and methodically, and always with a handbag. To what place he went I do not know. Neither I think did Mrs. Hastings or his employers. At the end of a week he would reappear, clothed as when he went away, but looking ill and shaken. For a few days afterwards he was always exceedingly subdued, ate little, and talked hardly at all. But by the end of a week he was himself again, and remained perfectly serene and normal until the time of his next disappearance. I once happened to see the contents of the handbag. They consisted of an old, rather ragged Norfolk coat and trousers and a suit of pyjamas; nothing else.

Mr. Smith was a sort of time-keeper at the works of Messrs. Poutney, Riggs, Poutney and Co., the wholesale builders' and masons' material people. I was informed that he had once been the chief traveller for this old-established firm, on a salary of seven hundred pounds a year, with a handsome commission, and all travelling expenses paid. His salary now was two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence a week; and I apprehend that his services were retained by the firm rather by virtue of what he had done in the past than for the sake of what he was doing at this time. I was told that commercial travelling in New South Wales, when Mr. Smith had been in his prime, was a dashing profession which produced many drunkards. But from Mr. Smith himself I never heard a word about his previous life.

I recall many small kindnesses received at his hands, and at the outset the domestic routine of my Sydney life was largely arranged for me by Mr. Smith.

'Never wear a collar more than once, or a white shirt more than twice,' was one of the first instructions I received from him. Subsequently he modified this a little for me, upon economic grounds, advising me to take special care of my shirt on Sunday, in order that it might serve for Monday and Tuesday. 'Then you've two days each for the other two shirts in each week, you see. But socks and collars you change every day. In Sydney you must never wear a coloured shirt; always a stiff, white shirt, in Sydney.'

On my second evening there Mr. Smith took me to a hatter's shop and chose a billycock hat for me, in place of the soft felt which I usually wore.

'You must have a hard hat in Sydney,' he said, 'except in real hot weather; and then you could wear a flat straw, if you liked. I prefer a grey hard hat for summer. But straw will do for a youngster. You should have a pair of gloves, for Sunday, you know. They're useful, too, for interviewing principals.'

One might have fancied that gloves were a kind of passport, or perhaps a skeleton key guaranteed to open principals' doors. It was Mr. Smith who first made me feel that there was a connection between morals, respectability, and cold baths. To miss the morning tub, as Mr. Smith saw it, was not merely a calamity but also a disgrace; a thing to make one ashamed; a lapse calculated seriously to affect character. How oddly that does clash, to be sure, with his views of a young man's relations with the other sex! And yet, I am not so sure. Shocked as many people would be by those views, they might admit in them perhaps a sort of hygienic intention. It was that I fancy, more than anything else, which did as a fact shock me. As companions, co-equals, fellow-humans, I believe this curious man absolutely detested women. I wonder what sort of a wife he had had! ...

When I come to compare my launch in Sydney with all that I know and have read of youthful beginnings in Old World centres, I marvel at the luxurious ease and freedom of Australian conditions. To put it into figures now--my start in Sydney did not cost me a sovereign. I did not spend two days without earning more than enough to defray all my modest outgoings. My search for employment, so far from wearing out shoe-leather, was confined to a single application, to one brief interview. This was not at all due to any cleverness on my part, but in the first place to the good offices of Mr. Perkins of Dursley, and in the second place to the easygoing character of prevailing Australian conditions.

On the morning after my first evening's dissipation in Sydney, I made my way to the business premises of Messrs. Joseph Canning and Son, the Sussex Street wholesale produce merchants and commission agents. This firm had had dealings with Dursley's Omnigerentual and Omniferacious Agent ever since his first appearance in that part, and it was no doubt because of this that Mr. Perkins wrote to them on my behalf. After waiting for a time in a dark little chamber containing specimens of cream separators and churns, I was taken to the private room of Mr. Joseph Canning, the senior partner, who, as I was presently to learn, visited the office chiefly to attend to such out-of-the-way trifles as my call, to smoke cigars, and to take selected clients out to lunch. The practical conduct of the business was entirely in the hands of Mr. John, this gentleman's only son.

I found Mr. Joseph Canning with his feet crossed on his blotting-pad, his body tilted far back in his chair, and his first morning cigar tilted far upward between his teeth, its ash perilously close to one bushy grey eyebrow.

'Well, me lad,' he said as I entered, 'how's the Omniferacious one? Blooming as ever, I hope.'

I explained that I had left Mr. Perkins in the best of health, and proceeded to answer, so far as I was able, the string of subsequent questions put to me regarding the town of Dursley, its principal residents, business progress, and chief hotel. I gathered that Mr. Canning had paid one visit to Dursley, under the auspices of its Omnigerentual Agent, and that while there he had contrived, with Mr. Perkins's assistance no doubt, 'to make that little town fairly hum.'

We talked in this strain for some time, and then Mr. Canning rose from his chair, clearly under the impression that his business with me had been satisfactorily completed, and prepared to dismiss me cordially, and proceed to other matters.

'Ah!' he ejaculated cheerfully, extending his right hand to me, and moving toward the door. 'Quite pleasant to have a chat about little Dursley. Well, take care of yourself in the big city, you know--bed by ten o'clock, and that sort of thing, you know; and--er--never touch anything in the morning. Safest plan.'

By this time the door was open, and I, on the threshold, was feeling considerably bewildered. With a great effort I managed to force out some such words as:

'And if you should hear of any sort of situation that I----'

At that he grabbed my hand again, and pulled me back into the room.

'Of course, of course! God bless my soul, I'd clean forgotten!' he exclaimed hurriedly as he strode across to his table and rang a bell.

'Ask Mr. John to kindly step this way a minute, will ye?' he said to the lad who answered the bell. 'Forget me name next, I suppose,' he added to me in a confidential undertone. 'Tut, tut! And I read Perkins's letter again just before you came in, too! Ah, here you are, John. Come in a minute, will you?'

A vigorous-looking fair-haired man of about five-and-thirty came into the room now, with the air of one who had been interrupted. He wore no coat, and his spotless shirt-sleeves were held well up on his arms by things like garters clasped above the elbow.

'Ah, John,' began his father, 'this is Mr. Perkins's "Nickperry"; you remember? Nick Freydon.' He referred to a letter on the table. 'Shorthand, you know, and all that. Well, what about it? D'jew remember?'

'Yes, yes, to be sure. Well, what about it?' This seemed to be a favourite phrase between father and son.

'Well, what was it you said? Thirty-five bob for a start, eh? Oh, well, you'll see to it, anyway, won't you? That's right. So long--er--Nickperry!'

'Good-morning, sir!'

And with that I found myself following Mr. John along a darkish passage to a well-lighted apartment, divided by a ground-glass partition from an office in which I saw perhaps eight or ten clerks at work.

'Now, Mr. Freydon,' said my guide, as he flung himself into a revolving chair, and motioned me to another on the opposite side of the table. 'We'll make it no more than five minutes, please, for I've got a stack of letters to answer, and some men to see at eleven sharp.'

And then I had a rather happy inspiration.

'Do you write your own letters, sir?' I asked.

'Eh? Oh, Lord, yes!' he said brusquely. 'I know some men dictate 'em to clerks, to be done in copper-plate, an' all that. But, goodness, I can write 'em myself quicker'n that! And we have to be mighty careful to say just the right kind of thing in our letters, too. It makes a difference.'

'Well, will you just try dictating one or two to me, sir, and let me take them in shorthand. Then I would bring them to you when you have seen the gentlemen at eleven.'

'Eh? Well, that's rather an idea. Let's have a shot. Here you are then. Pencil? Right? Well: "Dear Mr. Gubbins, yours of 14th, received with thanks." Got that? Yes; well, tell him--that is--"You are quite mistaken, I assure you, about your butter having been held back till the bottom was out of the market." Old fool's always grousing about his rotten butter. You see, the fact is his butter is second or third quality stuff, and he reads the quotations in the paper for the primest, and kicks like a steer because he doesn't get the same, or a penny more. Always threatening to change his agents, and I wish to God he would; only, o' course, it doesn't do to tell 'em so. There's a lot like Gubbins, an' one has to try an' sweeten 'em a bit once a week or so. Yes! Well, where were we? Eh? That all right?'

'Yes, sir. "Yours faithfully," or "Yours truly," sir?'

'Oh, well, I always say: "'shuring you vour bes' 'tention, bleeve me, yours faithfully, J. Canning and Son." It pleases them, an'----'

'Yes, sir.'

And some of the others were a good deal more sketchy, but fortunately there were only five in all. I asked Mr. John to let me take the original letters. It was plain that dictation was not his strong point. Neither, I thought, had he much idea of letter-writing; whereas I, so I flattered myself, could do it rather well. At least I had read something about commercial correspondence, and had also read the published letters of many famous people. So, as soon as I decently could, I pretended Mr. John had really dictated replies to his five letters, and that I had recorded his words in indelible shorthand. Then I said I would run away and write the letters while he kept his engagements.

'Right!' he said. 'Tell you what. Go into my father's room. He's gone out now, and you'll find paper and that there.'

So I made my first practical essay in commercial correspondence from the chair of the head of the firm, and among the fumes of the head's morning cigar.

In an old pocket-book I discovered a year or two ago the draft of the first letter I wrote for J. Canning and Son. Here it is:

'_To_ Mr. R. B. Gubbins, 'Ferndale Farm, 'Unaville, N.S.W.

'Nov. 3rd, 1879.

'Dear Mr. Gubbins,--Thank you for your letter of the 2nd inst. We have looked carefully into the matter of your complaint, and are glad to be able to assure you that your fears are quite unnecessary. We were, of course, prepared to take the matter up seriously with those responsible, but investigation proved that there had been no delay whatever in disposing of your last consignment of butter. It happened, however, that an exceptionally large supply of the very primest qualities were on offer that morning, and though one or two may have reached higher prices, as the result of exceptional circumstances, the bulk changed hands at the price obtained for yours, and many consignments at a lower figure. In several cases the prices given in the newspapers are either incorrect, or apply only to one or two special lots.

'In conclusion, permit us to assure you, dear Mr. Gubbins, that while your interests are entrusted to our hands they will always receive the closest possible attention, and that nothing will be left undone which could be in any way of benefit to you.

'Trusting this will make the position perfectly clear to you, and that you will be under no further anxiety with regard to your consignments to us, now, or at any future time.--We are, dear Mr. Gubbins, yours faithfully,'

In the same unexceptional style I wrote to four other clients, after very careful perusal of their letters, combined with reflections upon Mr. John's running commentaries. As I wrote what my father had called 'an almost painfully legible and blameless hand,' and gave the closest care to these particular letters, their appearance was tolerably business-like when finished. Carrying these letters, and those they answered, I now began to reconnoitre passages and doorways to ascertain the whereabouts and occupation of Mr. John. Presently I saw him come hurrying in from the street, wiping his lips with a handkerchief.

'The letters, sir,' I began.

'Ah! Got 'em done already? Right. Come into my room.'

I stood and watched him reading my effusions, at first with upward twitching brows, and then with smiling satisfaction.

'H'm!' he said, as he gave them the firm's signature. 'It's a pretty good thing then, this shorthand. Wonderful the way you've got every little word down. That "In conclusion, permit us to assure you, dear Mr. Gubbins"--now, that's as a business letter should be, you know. There's not a house in Sussex Street turns out such good sweeteners as we do. I've always been very careful about that. That's how we keep up our connection. These farmers are touchy beggars, you know; but if only you take the right tone with 'em, you can twist 'em round your little finger. That's why I always lay it on pretty thick in the firm's letters. It pays, I can assure you.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, that's very good, Mr. Freydon; very good. We've never had this shorthand in the office before; but I think it's time we did, high time. It's no use my wasting valuable time writing all these letters myself, and with this shorthand of yours, I believe you can take 'em down as fast as I can say it--eh?'

'Oh yes, sir; easily,' I said, with shameless mendacity. As a fact, neither that morning, nor at any other time, did I 'take down' what Mr. John said in shorthand. But it was already apparent to me that he could be made quite happy by fancying that the letters were of his composition, and I did not conceive that it was part of my duty to undeceive him.

'Ah! Well, now, when could you begin work, Mr. Freydon?'

I smiled, and told him I could go on at once with any further letters he had.

'Yes, yes; to be sure. Begun already, as you say. Well, I told the old--I told my father I thought thirty-five shillings a week would-- Well, I'll tell you what. You go ahead as you've begun, and at the end of a month we'll make your pay two pounds a week. How'll that suit?'

'Thank you, sir; that will suit me very well.'

'Right. By the way, don't say "sir" to me, please. They all call me "Mr. John," and my father "Mr. Canning." See! Now, I'll just introduce you to Mr. Meadows, our accountant, and he will show you round. Mr. Meadows has charge of our clerical staff, you understand; but you'll have most to do with me, of course. There's a little bit of a room opposite mine, where we keep the stationery an' that. I dare say you'll be able to work there.'

In this wise, then, with most fortunate ease, I secured my first employment in the capital city; and very well it suited me, for the present. Within a week I found that I was left to open all letters, and to deal with them very much as I thought best, with references of course to Mr. John, and at times, in a matter of accounts, to Mr. Meadows, or again to the storekeeper and others. It was not good shorthand practice, but his correspondence pleased Mr. John very much--especially its more rotund phrases--whilst for my part I keenly relished the fact that I, the most junior member of the staff, had really less of supervision in my work than any one else in the office.

Upon the whole I was entitled, on that evening of my first day in the Sussex Street offices, to feel that I had made a tolerably creditable beginning, and that Sydney had treated the latest suppliant for her favour rather well. What I very well remember I did feel was that I should have an interesting story for Mr. William Smith that night when I reached 'my rooms' at North Shore.

XV

My third day at J. Canning and Son's offices was a Saturday, and the establishment closed at one o'clock. My room-mate, Mr. Smith, had invited me to spend the afternoon with him at Manly, the favourite sea-beach resort close to Sydney Heads. I had other plans in view, but did not like to refuse Mr. Smith, and so spent the time with him, not without enjoyment.

Manly was not, of course, the thronged and crowded place it is to-day, but its Saturday afternoon visitors were fairly numerous, and most of them were people who showed in a variety of ways that they did not have to consider very closely the expenditure of a sovereign or so. For our part, Mr. Smith's and mine, I doubt if our outing cost more than five shillings; and, though I succeeded in paying my own boat-fares, my companion insisted upon settling himself for the refreshments we had: a cup of tea in the afternoon, and a sort of high tea or supper before leaving. I had not begun to tire of watching people, and was innocent enough to derive keen satisfaction from the thought that I, too, was one of these city folk, business people, office men, who gave their Saturday leisure to the quest of ocean breezes and recreation in this well-known resort.

Yes, from this distance, it is a little hard to realise perhaps, but it is a fact that at this particular time I was genuinely proud of being a clerk in an office, in place of being a handy lad, and one of the manual workers. It was my lot in later years to dictate considerable correspondence to young men who practised shorthand and typewriting--they called themselves secretaries, not correspondence clerks--and I always felt an interest in their characters and affairs, and endeavoured to show them every consideration. But I cannot say that those who served me in this capacity ever played just the sort of