advantage it would be to me; but I could not leave the village in
which Jessie lived, and, besides, I felt myself unfit to be anything
higher than I was. But when I had been some time at Luscombe, and
gradually got accustomed to another sort of people, and another sort
of talk, then I began to feel interest in the same objects that
interested those about me; and when, partly by mixing with better
educated men, and partly by the pains I took to educate myself, I felt
that I might now more easily rise above my uncle's rank of life than
two years ago I could have risen above a farrier's forge, then the
ambition to rise did stir in me, and grew stronger every day. Sir, I
don't think you can wake up a man's intellect but what you wake with
it emulation. And, after all, emulation is ambition."

"Then, I suppose, I have no emulation in me, for certainly I have no
ambition."

"That I can't believe, sir; other thoughts may cover it over and keep
it down for a time. But sooner or later, it will force its way to the
top, as it has done with me. To get on in life, to be respected by
those who know you, more and more as you grow older, I call that a
manly desire. I am sure it comes as naturally to an Englishman
as--as--"

"As the wish to knock down some other Englishman who stands in his way
does. I perceive now that you were always a very ambitious man, Tom;
the ambition has only taken another direction. Caesar might have been


"'But the first wrestler on the green.'