se, things quite apart from loss and the destruction
of old ideals which encumber the path of coming of age with troubles of
one sort or another. The air is thick with the shadows of regret. It is
seventeen years since I shot my first wild boar, and more than fifteen
since the last deer; a stag of twelve tines, as I am a christened man,
fell to my gun. It is thirteen years since I rode into the central pah
of the King's Country in New Zealand, and I have never crossed a horse
since then. It is a quarter of a century since I saw the heights of
Tashkesen, and heard the Turkish and Russian guns roaring defiance
at each other; and the sporting days, and the exploring days, and the
fighting days are all over. I shall never again stand knee-deep in snow
through the patient hours waiting for the forest quarry to break cover.
Think of the ensuing lumbago! I shall hear the thrilling boom of the
big guns no more. I shall never again penetrate into the freshness of a
virgin land. I shall see no more the hammer of the midday sun beat its
great splashes of light from the snow-clad summits of the Rockies and
the Selkirks. The long and the short of it is that I am transformed from
my old estate of globe-trotter and observer of events and nature into
the land of suburban old fogeydom, and the point to touch, so far as I
am personally engaged, is whether really and truly I do very much and
deeply regret the change. Not very deeply, after all, I am disposed
to think. His workshop bounds all to the old fogey who has lived out a
great many of his friendships, but within its limits what sights may he
not see? Calais, first seen of Continental towns, is still a possession
of my own. The Paris of 1872 is mine, the Rhine and the Rhine fall,
Vienna, Berlin, the Alps--the Austrian Alps, the Australian and New
Zealand Alps--they are all mine. Kicking Horse River is mine, and the
steely whirl of the lower rapids of Niagara before they reach the fall.
And, in clear view of the ideals which would shake me from my seat, I
have but one answer to offer them. My shabby study armchair is the seat
from which I look compassion on a struggling world, as a man fairly
drowned and accepting his fate might look on fellow mariners yet only
in process of drowning. Fill the mind with memories of things
whole-heartedly attempted! You have failed or half-failed. Everybody has
failed or half-failed who ever tried to do anything worth doing. You are
not more unblest tha