Page 41 - An Australian Lassie

plodding onwards past every obstacle and hardship. But he forgot to notice that they all made the best of that
sphere of life into which they were born.

He had quite decided to be a self-made man. That was simple enough. The question that troubled him was
what sort of a self-made man to be! A Newton? A Shakespeare? A Stephenson? A Turner? An Arkwright?

The wide choice worried and perplexed him. Tt was pitiful to his thinking that he could, try and strive as he
might, only be one.

He had put himself through several examinations. He had lain under a pear tree and watched the leaves fall; he
felt another man had the monopoly of apple trees. And he had decided that the leaves fell because they had
become unfastened from the branches, and that they did not fall straight because the wind blew them
sideways. And there was an end of the leaves.

He had studied kitchen furnishings and their ways, avoiding only the kettle, since some one else had risen on
its steam.

He had tried himself with a pencil and paper, but he had composed nothing even reminiscent of Shakespeare.
Tn fact, he had composed nothing at all.

And at last he became convinced it was the circumstances of his life that were at fault, not he himself. If he
had only been a cobbler's son, a tailor's, a barber's!

But alas! he was well-dressed, well-fed, well-housed; sent to a good school. He had a pony of his own and a
man to groom him; a bicycle; a watch; every equipment for cricket and football; a dog; pigeons and most of
the possessions dear to the heart of a boy.

He had almost finished his dinner to-day when he put a question to the Captain sitting there smiling over his
letter.

"Grandfather," he asked, "are you rich?"

His grandfather sat straight immediately, which is to speak of his features as well as his figure.

"Well, what do you think, lad?" he asked.

John shook his head dolefully.

"I think you are," he said, "but are you?"

"That depends on how riches are counted," said the old man cautiously, "and who does the counting. King
Solomon, now, might consider me but an old pauper."

John went on with his dinner thoughtfully.

"Are you wondering what T am going to do with my money?" asked the old man, watching him closely.

John looked him straight in the face.

"T expect you're going to leave it to me," he said.

"Ah!" said his grandfather. "And who has been talking to you now? Who told you that?"