hesitatingly: "I
can't pretend to say what maybe the case with others. But to judge by my
own case, it seems to me this: a young man who, out of his own business,
has nothing to interest or excite him, finds content, interest, and
excitement when he falls in love; and then, whether for good or ill, he
thinks there is nothing like love in the world, he don't care a fig for
ambition then. Over and over again did my poor uncle ask me to come to
him at Luscombe, and represent all the worldly advantage it would be
to me; but I could not leave the village in which Jessie lived, and,
besides, I felt myself unfit to be anything higher than I was. But
when I had been some time at Luscombe, and gradually got accustomed to
another sort of people, and another sort of talk, then I began to feel
interest in the same objects that interested those about me; and when,
partly by mixing with better educated men, and partly by the pains I
took to educate myself, I felt that I might now more easily rise above
my uncle's rank of life than two years ago I could have risen above
a farrier's forge, then the ambition to rise did stir in me, and grew
stronger every day. Sir, I don't think you can wake up a man's intellect
but what you wake with it emulation. And, after all, emulation is
ambition."

"Then, I suppose, I have no emulation in me, for certainly I have no
ambition."

"That I can't believe, sir; other thoughts may cover it over and keep it
down for a time. But sooner or later, it will force its way to the top,
as it has done with me. To get on in life, to be respected by those who
know you, more and more as you grow older, I call that a manly desire. I
am sure it comes as naturally to an Englishman as--as--"

"As the wish to knock down some other Englishman who stands in his way
does. I perceive now that you were always a very ambitious man, Tom; the
ambition has only taken another direction. Caesar might have been

"'But the first wrestler on the green.'

"And now, I suppose, you abandon the idea of travel: you will return to
Luscombe, cured of all regret for the loss of Jessie; you will marry the
young lady you mention, and rise, through progressive steps of alderman
and mayor, into the rank of member for Luscombe."

"All that may come in good time," answered Tom, not resenting the tone
of irony in which he was addressed, "but I still intend to travel: a
year so spent must render me all the more fit for any station I aim