ey 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its being out-of-date by one day when it reached her hands.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 ge