y high-sounding phrase with a faint hint of
distaste; "Constructive Statesmanship. No. Once a barrister always a
barrister. You'll only be a party politician.... Vulgar men....
Vulgar.... If you succeed that is...."

He criticized me but he did not oppose me, and already in the beginning
of the summer we had settled that I should be called to the bar.

Now suddenly I wanted to go back upon all these determinations. I began
to demand in the intellectual slang of the time "more actuality," and to
amaze my father with talk about empire makers and the greatness of Lord
Strathcona and Cecil Rhodes. Why, I asked, shouldn't I travel for a year
in search of opportunity? At Oxford I had made acquaintance with a son
of Pramley's, the big Mexican and Borneo man, and to him I wrote,
apropos of a half-forgotten midnight talk in the rooms of some common
friend. He wrote back with the suggestion that I should go and talk to
his father, and I tore myself away from Mary and went up to see that
great exploiter of undeveloped possibilities and have one of the most
illuminating and humiliating conversations in the world. He was, I
remember, a little pale-complexioned, slow-speaking man with a humorous
blue eye, a faint, just perceptible northern accent and a trick of
keeping silent for a moment after you had finished speaking, and he
talked to me as one might talk to a child of eight who wanted to know
how one could become a commander-in-chief. His son had evidently
emphasized my Union reputation, and he would have been quite willing, I
perceived, to give me employment if I had displayed the slightest
intelligence or ability in any utilizable direction. But quite
dreadfully he sounded my equipment with me and showed me the emptiness
of my stores.

"You want some way that gives you a chance of growing rich rapidly," he
said. "Aye. It's not a bad idea. But there's others, you know, have
tried that game before ye.

"You don't want riches just for riches but for an end. Aye! Aye! It's
the spending attracts ye. You'd not have me think you'd the sin of
avarice. I'm clear on that about ye.

"Well," he explained, "it's all one of three things we do, you
know--prospecting and forestalling and--just stealing, and the only
respectable way is prospecting. You'd prefer the respectable way, I
suppose?... I knew ye would. Well, let's see what chances ye have."

And he began to probe my practical knowledge. It was like an unfit man
stripping for a