“But what on earth makes you think you might be one of them?” demanded Ma.

“Why shouldn’t she be?” murmured Pa.

“You can’t be anything without means these days.”

“The times are always the same. People make their opportunities.”

“She doesn’t strike me as that kind.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” maintained Pa. “Greatness has sprung from unlikelier sources.”

CHAPTER THREE.

THE LOGIC OF EGOTISM.

Poverty is a stultifying curse. We suffered from it. Ma blamed Pa. Pa never blamed anyone but himself. He had not always been poor. He was no business man. Bad seasons and foolish investments lost him his parental station. Ma considered his term in Parliament as Member for Gool Gool his biggest financial mistake. Pa had been under heavy election expenses, and was robbed by a partner during his absence. Pa had had ambitions to improve the Colony through political action, and had failed. That was why Ma was alarmed by my symptoms. I was too young to remember Pa’s Parliamentary term. Ma’s abiding reference to it is that men are very fond of the sound of their own voices. Well, I like Pa’s voice too, because it is never raised in blame.

Pa is tall and lean and lank and brown as is the ribbed sea sand, and he is fond of poetry. Byron is a favourite with him. He can quote Byron by the page.

This makes the madmen who have made men mad

By their contagion; conquerors and kings,

Founders of sects and systems, to whom add

Sophists, bards, statesmen, all unquiet things.

* * *

He who surpasses or subdues mankind

Must look down on the hate of those below.

Such lines roll splendidly from him. Ma says a man betrays himself by what he extols. I asked if that also applies to women, but Ma says not nearly so accurately, as women have to pretend to like so many things to humour men.

Ma extols Dr. Watts. He is prosaic compared with Byron.

Not more than others I deserve,

Yet God has given me more

For I have food while others starve,

Or beg from door to door.

Which suggests mean favouritism on the part of God, and a priggish self-satisfaction on the part of one who has petty deserts.

Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do, has often driven me exasperated and frustrated from meditation when a thought was filling out like a sail catching a breeze.

Dr. Watts was the lighter side of Ma. She was also a whale on Shakespeare. I enjoyed him too, but Milton was too much of a good thing. Ma insisted that I should learn long slices of Milton as discipline and to elevate my thoughts.

Where joy for ever dwells; hail, horrors; hail,

Infernal world; and thou, profoundest hell,

Receive thy new possessor; one who brings

A mind not to be changed by place or time.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.