the other preoccupation. And, keen though I was about this, I did
not in any sense become an ascetic youth held down by stern resolves.
I think I rather enjoyed the small sacrifices and the steady saving;
and I know I very much enjoyed applying for and obtaining another
small increase of salary, after completing a trumpery series of
sketches of pleasure resorts near Sydney, the publication of which
brought substantial profit to the _Chronicle_.

One thing that did rather hurt me at this time was a comment made upon
myself, and accidentally overheard by me in the reporters' room at the
office. This was a remark made by an American newspaper man, who,
having been a month or two on the staff, was dismissed for
drunkenness. He spoke in a penetrating nasal tone as I approached the
open door of the room, and what he said to his unknown companion came
as such a buffet in the face to me that I turned and walked away. The
words I heard were:

'Freydon? Oh yes; clever, in his ten cent way. I allow the chap's
honest, mind, but, sakes alive, he's only what a N'York thief would
call a "sure thing grafter."'

The phrase was perfectly unfamiliar to me, but intuitively I knew
exactly what it meant, and I suppose it hurt because I felt its
applicability. A 'sure thing grafter' was a criminal who took no
chances, I felt; an adventurer who played for petty stakes only,
because he would face no risks. Even the American pressman knew I was
no criminal. He probably would have despised me less if he thought I
stole. But--there it was. The chance shaft went home. And it hurt.

I dare say there was considerable pettiness about the way in which I
saved my earnings instead of squandering them with glad youthfulness,
as did most of my colleagues. There was something of the huckster's
instinct, no doubt, in many of the trivial journalistic ideas I
evolved, took to my chief, and pleased my employers by carrying out
successfully. I suppose these were the petty ways by which I managed
somehow to clamber out of the position in which my father's death had
left me. They are set down here because they certainly were a part of
my life. I am not ashamed of them, but I do wonder at them rather as a
part of my life; not at all as something beneath me, but as something
suggesting the possession of a kind of commercial gift for 'getting
on,' of which my after life gave little or no indication. In all my
youth there was undoubtedly a marked absence of the c