to Australia, and did succeed, first as a shepherd, next as a
superintendent, and finally, on saving money, as a landowner; and that
in spite of his opinions of the unholiness of war, he was no sooner in
possession of a comfortable log homestead than he defended it with
uncommon gallantry against an attack of the aborigines, whose right to
the soil was, to say the least of it, as good as his claim to my uncle's
acres; that he commemorated his subsequent acquisition of a fresh
allotment, with the stock on it, by a little pamphlet, published at
Sydney, on the "Sanctity of the Rights of Property;" and that when I
left the colony, having been much pestered by two refractory "helps"
that he had added to his establishment, he had just distinguished
himself by a very anti-levelling lecture upon the duties of servants to
their employers. What would the Old World have done for this man?




CHAPTER V.


I had not been in haste to conclude my arrangements, for, independently
of my wish to render myself acquainted with the small useful crafts that
might be necessary to me in a life that makes the individual man a state
in himself, I naturally desired to habituate my kindred to the idea of
our separation, and to plan and provide for them all such substitutes or
distractions, in compensation for my loss, as my fertile imagination
could suggest. At first, for the sake of Blanche, Roland, and my
mother, I talked the Captain into reluctant sanction of his sister-in-
law's proposal to unite their incomes and share alike, without
considering which party brought the larger proportion into the firm. I