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 substitut