admirable "Australian Hand-Book," recommends young gentlemen who think
of becoming settlers in the Bush to bivouac for three months on
Salisbury Plain. That book was not then written, or I might have taken
the advice; meanwhile I think, with due respect to such authority, that
I went through a preparatory training quite as useful in seasoning the
future emigrant. I associated readily with the kindly peasants and
craftsmen, who became my teachers. With what pride I presented my
father with a desk, and my mother with a work-box, fashioned by my own
hands! I made Bolt a lock for his plate-chest, and (that last was my
magnum opus, my great masterpiece) I repaired and absolutely set going
an old turret-clock in the tower that had stood at 2 p.m. since the
memory of man. I loved to think, each time the hour sounded, that those
who heard its deep chime would remember me. But the flocks were my main
care. The sheep that I tended and helped to shear, and the lamb that I
hooked out of the great marsh, and the three venerable ewes that I
nursed through a mysterious sort of murrain which puzzled all the
neighborhood,--are they not written in thy loving chronicles, O House of
Caxton?

And now, since much of the success of my experiment must depend on the
friendly terms I could establish with my intended partner, I wrote to
Trevanion, begging him to get the young gentleman who was to join me,
and whose capital I was to administer, to come and visit us. Trevanion
complied; and there arrived a tall fellow, somewhat more than six feet
high, answering to the name of Guy Bolding, in a cut-away sporting-coat,
with a dog whistle tied to the button-hole, drab shorts and gaiters, and
a waistcoat with all manner of strange furtive pockets. Guy Bolding had
lived a year and a half at Oxford as a "fast man,"--so "fast" had he
lived that there was scarcely a tradesman at Oxford into whose books he
had not contrived to run.