Many years ago, in New Zealand, I used sometimes to accompany a dray and
team of bullocks who would have to be turned loose at night that they
might feed. There were no hedges or fences then, so sometimes I could
not find my team in the morning, and had no clue to the direction in
which they had gone. At first I used to try and throw my soul into the
bullocks' souls, so as to divine if possible what they would be likely to
have done, and would then ride off ten miles in the wrong direction.
People used in those days to lose their bullocks sometimes for a week or
fortnight--when they perhaps were all the time hiding in a gully hard by
the place where they were turned out. After some time I changed my
tactics. On losing my bullocks I would go to the nearest accommodation
house, and stand drinks. Some one would ere long, as a general rule,
turn up who had seen the bullocks. This case does not go quite on all
fours with what I have been saying above, inasmuch as I was not very
industrious in my limited area; but the standing drinks and inquiring was
being as industrious as the circumstances would allow.
To return, universities and academies are an obstacle to the finding of
doors in later life; partly because they push their young men too fast
through doorways that the universities have provided, and so discourage
the habit of being on the look-out for others; and partly because they do
not take pains enough to make sure that their doors are _bona fide_ ones.
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