48 WANDERINGS AND MEMORIES 



should have been a Captain in six months, but this 

 did not prevent me from throwing up my com- 

 mission and entering a new hne of life. Moreover, 

 a severe attack of influenza, followed by chronic 

 sleeplessness, caused me great depression. So, much 

 to my father's regret, I left the army and went off 

 to South Africa to see something of the wild life 

 on which I had always set my heart. Recently my 

 uncle, Everett Gray, had died and left me a small 

 legacy, and with this I bought a wagon and oxen 

 and went off into the interior for a year's hunting. 



Small things often change a man's life and pro- 

 fession, but I confess that I have never regretted 

 the step I took that January morning in 1893, and 

 thirty years of wandering and work at home are 

 my ideal of freedom, with its contact with interesting 

 things and people. Travel and the association 

 which it brings with all kinds of men has always 

 seemed to me the best education in the world, for 

 it gives one the greatest sympathy with other 

 people, and an insight into those problems of 

 Imperial Unity which are, after all, the heart of 

 England's greatness. To be a " Jack of all Trades " 

 may not be the most profitable profession in a 

 worldly sense, but at any rate I have found it the 

 most interesting existence. In turn I have been 

 soldier, sailor, a British Consul, artist, zoologist, 

 author and landscape gardener, so life is alto- 

 gether too short for all the things one would like 

 to do; but if variety is the spice of life, and a 

 living can be made, it is far better than grinding 

 all one's days at an office stool to amass wealth, 

 which, once gained, cannot always be enjoyed. 

 The great thing in life is to live. 



