Stimulated perhaps by the remarks of the good Mr. Smith, my room-mate, I planned ventures of this kind in bed, descending fully armed with them upon Mr. Foster by day, in most cases to fire him, more or less, by my own enthusiasm. Upon the whole I earned my pay pretty well while working for the Chronicle, even having regard to the several small increases made therein. If I lacked ability and experience, I gave more than most of my colleagues, perhaps, in concentration and initiative.
The two things most salient, I think, which befell in this phase of my life were my determination to go to England, and my only adolescent love affair; this, as distinguished from the sentimental episodes of infancy and childhood, which with me had been a rather prolific crop.
The determination to make my way to England, the land of my fathers, did not take definite shape until comedy, with a broad smile, rang down the curtain upon my love affair. But I fancy it had been a long while in the making. I am not sure but what the germ of it began to stir a little in its husk even at St. Peter's Orphanage; I feel sure it did while I browsed upon English fiction in my little wooden room beside the tool-shed at Dursley. It was near the surface from the time I began to visit Mr. Rawlence's studio in Macquarie Street, and busily developing from that time onward, though it did not become a visible and admitted growth, with features and a shape of its own, until more than two years had elapsed. Then, quite suddenly, I recognised it, and told myself it was for this really that I had been 'saving up.'
In the Old World the adventurous-minded, enterprising youth turns naturally from contemplation of the humdrum security of the multitudinously trodden path in which he finds himself to thoughts of the large new lands; of those comparatively untried and certainly uncrowded uplands of the world, which, apart from the other chances and attractions they offer, possess the advantage of lying oversea, from the beaten track--over the hills and far away. 'Here,' he may be supposed to feel, as he gazes about him in his familiar, Old World environment, 'there is nothing but what has been tried and exploited, sifted through and through time and again, all adown the centuries. What chance is there for me among the crowd, where there is nothing new, nothing untried? Whereas, out there--' Ah, the magic of those words, 'Out there!' and 'Over there!' for home-bred youth! It is good, wholesome magic, too, and it will be a bad day for the Old World, a disastrous day for England, when it ceases to exercise its powers upon the hearts and imaginations of the youth of our stock.
Well, and in the New World, in the case of such sprawling young giants among the nations of the future as Australia, what is the master dream of adventurous and enterprising youth there? Australia, like Canada, has its call of the west and the north, with their appealing tale of untried potentialities. Canada has also, across its merely figurative and political southern border, a vast and teeming world, reaching down to the equator, and comprising almost every possible diversity of human effort and natural resource. Australia, the purely British island continent, is more isolated. But, broadly speaking, the very facts which make the enterprising Old World youth fix his gaze upon the New World cause the same type of youth in Australia, for example, to look home-along across the seas, toward those storied islands of the north which, it may be, he has never seen: the land which, in some cases, even his parents have not seen since their childhood.
'Here,' he may be imagined saying, as he looks about him among the raw uprising products of the new land, where the past is nothing and all hope centres upon the future, 'Here everything is yet to do; everything is in the making. Here, money's the only reward. Who's to judge of one's accomplishment here? Fame has no accredited deputy in this unmade world. Whereas, back there, at home--' Oh, the magic of those words 'At Home!' and 'In England!' alike for those who once have seen the white cliffs fade out astern, and for those who have seen them only in dreams, bow on!
Everything has been tried and accomplished there. The very thought that speeds the emigrant pulls at the heart-strings of the immigrant; drawing home one son from the outposts, while thrusting out another toward the outposts, there to learn what England means, and to earn and deserve the glory of his birthright. That, in a nutshell, is the real history of the British Empire....
But, as I said, before final recognition of the determination to go to England came my youthful love affair. With every apparent deference toward the traditions of romance, I fell in love with the daughter of my chief; and my fall was very thorough and complete. I was in the editorial sanctum one afternoon, discussing some piece of work, and getting instructions from Mr. Foster--'G.F.' as we called him--when the door was flung open, as no member of the staff would ever have opened it, and two very charming young women fluttered in, filling the whole place by their simple presence there. One was dark and the other fair: the first, my chief's daughter Mabel; the second, her bosom friend, Hester Prinsep.
'Oh, father, we're all going down to see Tommy off. I want to get some flowers, and I've come out without a penny, so I want some money.'
My chief had risen, and was drawing forward a chair for Miss Prinsep. I do not think he intended to pay the same attention to his daughter, but I did, and received a very charming smile for my pains. Upon which G.F. presented me in due form to both ladies. Turning then to his daughter, he said with half-playful severity: