The proportion of fighting in the battle of life outweighs the
"beer and skittles"; as does the interest. Johnny McLean found
interest in masses, in the drab-and-dun village on the prairie.
He found pleasure, too, and as far as he could reach he tried to
share it; buoyancy and generosity were born in him; strenuousness
he had painfully acquired, and like most converts was a fanatic
about it. He was splendidly fit; he was the best and last output
of the best institution in the country; he went at his work
like a joyful locomotive. Yet more goes to explain what he was
and what he did. He developed a faculty for leading men. The
cold bath of failure, the fire of success had tempered the young
steel of him to an excellent quality; bright and sharp, it cut
cobwebs in the Oriel mine where cobwebs had been thickening for
months. The boy, normal enough, quite unphenomenal, was growing
strong by virtue of his one strong quality: he did what he
resolved to do. For such a character to make a vital decision
rightly is a career. On the night of the Tap Day which had so
shaken him, he had struck the key-note. He had resolved to use
his life as if it were a tool in his hand to do work, and he
had so used it. The habit of bigness, once caught, possesses one
as quickly as the habit of drink; Johnny McLean was as unhampered
by the net of smallnesses which tangle most of us as a hermit;
the freedom gave him a power which was fast making a marked man
of him.

There was dissatisfaction among the miners; a strike was probable;
the popularity of the new superintendent warded it off from month
to month, which counted unto him for righteousness in the mind
of the president, of which Johnny himself was unaware. Yet the