f.

At least he did understand how serious a thing it was, his going as a
missionary into the Far North. Why did he do it? Was it a whim, or the
excited imagination of youth, or that prompting which the young often
have to make the world better? Or was it a fine spirit of adventure with
a good heart behind it? Perhaps it was a little of all these; but there
was also something more, and it was to his credit.

Lazy as William Rufus Holly had been at school and college, he had
still thought a good deal, even when he seemed only sleeping; perhaps
he thought more because he slept so much, because he studied little and
read a great deal. He always knew what everybody thought--that he would
never do anything but play cricket till he got too heavy to run, and
then would sink into a slothful, fat, and useless middle and old age;
that his life would be a failure. And he knew that they were right; that
if he stayed where he could live an easy life, a fat and easy life he
would lead; that in a few years he would be good for nothing except to
eat and sleep--no more. One day, waking suddenly from a bad dream of
himself so fat as to be drawn about on a dray by monstrous fat oxen with
rings through their noses, led by monkeys, he began to wonder what he
should do--the hardest thing to do; for only the hardest life could
possibly save him from failure, and, in spite of all, he really did want
to make something of his life. He had been reading the story of Sir John
Franklin's Arctic expedition, and all at once it came home to him that
the only thing for him to do was to go to the Far North and stay there,
coming back about once every ten years to tell the people in the cities
what was being done in the wilds. Then there came the inspiration to
write his poem on Sir John Franklin, and he had done so, winning the
college prize for poetry. But no one had seen any change in him in those
months; and, indeed, there had been little or no change, for he had
an equable and practical, though imaginative, disposition, despite
his avoirdupois, and his new purpose did not stir him yet from his
comfortable sloth.

And in all the journey West and North he had not been stirred greatly
from his ease of body, for the journey was not much harder than playing
cricket every day, and there were only the thrill of the beautiful air,
the new people, and the new scenes to rouse him. As yet there was no
great responsibility. He scarcely realised what his life m