'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: