Many years ago, in New Zealand, I used sometimes to accompany a
dray and team of bullocks who would have to be turned loose at
night that they might feed. There were no hedges or fences then,
so sometimes I could not find my team in the morning, and had no
clue to the direction in which they had gone. At first I used to
try and throw my soul into the bullocks' souls, so as to divine if
possible what they would be likely to have done, and would then
ride off ten miles in the wrong direction. People used in those
days to lose their bullocks sometimes for a week or fortnight--when
they perhaps were all the time hiding in a gully hard by the place
where they were turned out. After some time I changed my tactics.
On losing my bullocks I would go to the nearest accommodation
house, and stand occasional drinks to travellers. Some one would
ere long, as a general rule, turn up who had seen the bullocks.
This case does not go quite on all fours with what I have been
saying above, inasmuch as I was not very industrious in my limited
area; but the standing drinks and inquiring was being as
industrious as the circumstances would allow.

To return, universities and academies are an obstacle to the
finding of doors in later life; partly because they push their
young men too fast through doorways that the universities have
provided, and so discourage the habit of being on the look-out for
others; and partly because they do not take pains enough to make
sure that their doors are bona fide ones. If, to change the
metaphor, an academy has taken a bad shilling, it is seldom very
scrupulous about trying to pass it on. It will stick to it that
the shilling is a good one as long as the police will let it. I
was very happy at Cambridge; when I left it I thought I never again
could be so happy anywhere else; I shall ever retain a most kindly