AUTOBIOGRAPHY 5 



tices current among us. Almost the only cheerful rem- 

 iniscence in connection with the place which arises 

 in my mind is that of a battle I had with one of my 

 classmates, who had bullied me until I could stand 

 it no longer. I was a very slight lad, but there was a 

 wild-cat element in me which, when roused, made up 

 for lack of weight, and I licked my adversary effectu- 

 ally. However, one of my first experiences of the ex- 

 tremely rough-and-ready nature of justice, as ex- 

 hibited by the course of things in general, arose out of 

 the fact that I the victor had a black eye, while 

 he the vanquished had none, so that I got into 

 disgrace and he did not. We made it up, and there- 

 after I was unmolested. One of the greatest shocks I 

 ever received in my life was to be told a dozen years 

 afterwards by the groom who brought me my horse 

 in a stable-yard in Sydney that he was my quondam 

 antagonist. He had a long story of family misfortune 

 to account for his position, but at that time it was ne- 

 cessary to deal very cautiously with mysterious stran- 

 gers in New South Wales, and on inquiry I found that 

 the unfortunate young man had not only been "sent 

 out," but had undergone more than one colonial con- 

 viction. 



As I grew older, my great desire was to be a me- 

 chanical engineer, but the fates were against this and, 

 while very young, I commenced the study of medicine 

 under a medical brother-in-law. But, though the In- 

 stitute of Mechanical Engineers would certainly not 

 own me, I am not sure that I have not all along been 

 a sort of mechanical engineer in partibus infidelium. 

 I am now occasionally horrified to think how verv 

 little I ever knew or cared about medicine as the art 

 of healing. The only part of my professional course 



