leman new-chum to find a
berth of that sort, perhaps he may after he has become "colonized," but
at first he will have to go straight away and fell bush, chop firewood,
drive cattle, or tend pigs. About the best advice I ever heard given to
middle-class men, who thought of emigrating to New Zealand, was couched
in some such terms as these.

"What are your prospects here? If you have any, stop where you are. But
if you have no particular profession, nothing better before you than
laborious quill-driving and the like, at eighty pounds a year, and small
probability of ever rising so high as two hundred, however many years
you stick to the desk, or the yard-measure, then you may think of
emigrating. If you are strong and able-bodied, somewhere between sixteen
and twenty-six years of age--for over twenty-six men are generally too
old to emigrate, I think--I say, emigrate by all means, for you will
have a better chance of leading a healthy, happy, and fairly comfortable
life. But you must throw all ideas of gentility to the winds, banish the
thought of refinement, and prepare for a rough, hard struggle, and it
may be a long one, too. You may please yourselves with the prospect of
competence, comfort, and even luxury in the distance, but you must look
at it through a lengthy vista of real hard work, difficulty, and bodily
hardship. Success, in a greater or lesser degree, _always_ follows
patient industry at the Antipodes; it can scarcely be said to do so in
Britain.

"Now, _Il n'y a que le premier pas qui coute_, and the worst time you
will have is at the first; also, it is only for the start that you need
advice, after you become 'colonized' you can look out for yourselves. If
you have any particular acquaintance with a useful trade, so much the
better; if you have not, and can do so, learn one before you
go--carpentry, boat-building, blacksmithing, tinkering, cobbling; it
will help you through wonderfully. It doesn't matter twopence _how_ you
go out, whether saloon, intermediate, or steerage, so far as your future
prospects are concerned. If you can compass the means, go saloon--the
extra comfort on a long voyage is well worth the extra price; besides,
you might have some returning colonist as fellow-voyager, whose
friendship would prove useful. When you land, bank any money you may
have brought with you--whether it be ten pounds or ten thousand, I say
the same--and resolve not to touch it, however you may be tempted, for