al list of articles required for
an emigrant's kit: his books.

His library consisted of some three thousand volumes, the gleanings of
a quarter of a century when books were neither so numerous nor so
cheap as they are to-day. From these he set himself the maddening task
of selecting one hundred volumes to be taken with us. The rest were to
be sold. The whole of our preparations are dominated in the retrospect
for me, by my father's absorption in the task of sifting and re-sifting
his books. Acting under his instructions, I myself handled
each one of the three thousand and odd volumes a good many times.
Eventually, we took six hundred and seventy-three volumes with us, of
which more than fifty were repurchased, at a notable advance, of
course, upon the price he paid for them, from the dealer who bought
the remainder.

This was my first insight into the subtleties of trade, and I noted
with loyal anger, in my father's interest, how contemptuously the
dealer belittled our books in buying them, and how eloquently he
dilated upon their special values in selling back to us those my
father found he could not spare. In every case these volumes were rare
and hard to come by, greatly in demand, 'the pick of the basket,' and
so forth. Well, I suppose that is commerce. At the time it seemed to
me amply to justify all my father's lofty scorn and hatred for
everything in any way connected with business.

If only the book-dealer could have adopted Mr. Fennel's praiseworthy
attitude, I thought: 'Pray don't put yourself about, sir, on my
account, I beg.' But then, Mr. Fennel, I make no doubt, was heading
straight for bankruptcy. I have sought his name in vain among Putney's
modern tradesfolk. Whereas, Mr. Siemens, the gentleman who bought our
library, apart from his various thriving establishments in London, now
cherishes his declining years, I believe, in a villa in the Italian
Riviera, and a manor house in Hampshire. Though young, when I met him
in Putney, he evidently had the root of the matter in him, from a
commercial point of view, and was possibly even a little in advance of
his time in the matter of business ability. He drove a very smart
horse, I remember, was dressed smartly, and had a smart way of saying
that business was business. Yes, I dare say Mr. Siemens was more a man
of his time than my poor father.

It was on the afternoon of May 2, 1870, the day after my tenth
birthday, that we sailed from Gravesend for Sydney,