judged by any scholastic standard I ever heard expounded,
there is no doubt about it, I was, and for that matter am, a veritable
ignoramus.

During all the year which followed the beginning of intimacy between
us, my impression is that my father was increasingly worried and
depressed. Children have a shrewder consciousness of these things than
many of their elders suppose; and I was well aware that things were
not going well with my father. I saw more of him, and missed no
opportunities of obtaining his companionship. He, for his part, saw a
good deal less of other people, I fancy, and lost no opportunity of
avoiding intercourse with his contemporaries. He brooded a great deal;
and was very fitful in his reading, writing, and correspondence. I
began to hear upon his lips significant if vague expressions of his
desire to 'Get away from all this'; to 'Get out of this wretched
scramble'; to 'Find a way out of it all.'

And then with bewildering suddenness came the first big event of my
career; the event which, I suppose, was chiefly responsible also for
its latest episode.

IV

No doubt one reason why our migration to Australia seemed so
surprisingly sudden a step to me was that the preliminaries were
arranged without my knowledge. Apart from this, I believe the step was
swiftly taken.

My father had no wife or family to consider. I do not think there was
a single relative left, beside myself, with whom he had maintained
intercourse of any kind. Our household effects were all sold as they
stood in the house, to a singularly urbane and gentlemanly old dealer
in such things, a Mr. Fennel, whose stock phrase: 'Pray don't put
yourself about on my account, sir, I beg,' seemed to me to form his
reply to every remark of my father's. And thus, momentous though the
hegira might be, and was, to us, I suppose it did not call for any
very serious amount of detailed preparation, once my father had made
his decision.

Looking back upon it now, in the light of some knowledge of the
subject, and of old lands and new, it seems to me open to question
whether, in all the moving story of British oversea adventuring, there
is an instance of any migration more curious than ours, or of any
person emigrating who was less suited for the venture than my father.
In the matter of our baggage and personal effects, now, the one thing
to which my father devoted serious care was something which probably
would not figure at all in any offici