And soon came the new chance which led to much bigger things.
It was now the spring of 1897, two years after Hoover's graduation, and
the time of the great West Australia mining boom. English companies were
sending out many engineers, old and young, to investigate and handle
mining properties in the new field, and were looking everywhere for
competent men. Janin was asked by one of these London firms to recommend
someone to them. He talked it over with Hoover, telling him that it
might be a great opportunity. It might, of course, not be; it would
depend on the prospect--and the man who handled it. Janin expressed his
entire confidence in the young man before him, and his belief that the
opportunity was greater than any the Pacific Coast then had to offer. He
would be more than glad to keep Hoover with him, but he wanted to be
fair to him and his future. The young man was all for giving hostages to
fortune, and so the recommendation, the offer, and the acceptance flew
by cable between San Francisco and London, and Hoover prepared to start
at once to England for instructions, as had been stipulated in the
offer.

Just before he started, however, Janin caused him some uneasiness by
saying, "Now look here, Hoover, I have cabled London swearing to your
full technical qualifications, and I am not afraid of your letting me
down on that. But these conservative Londoners have stipulated that you
should be thirty-five years old. I have wired that I was sorry to have
to tell them that you are not quite thirty-three. Don't forget that my
reputation depends on your looking thirty-three by the time you get to
London!" And Hoover had not yet reached his twenty-third birthday, and
looked at least two years younger even than that. He began growing a
beard on his way across the continent.

The London firm had stipulated, too, that their new man should be
unmarried. Hoover was still that, although he had begun to get impatient
about what seemed to him an unnecessary delay in carrying out his
decision already made in college. As a matter of fact, there was still
no definite engagement between him and the girl of the geology
department, but there was an informal understanding that some day there
might be a formal one. So Hoover appeared before the head of the great London house--perhaps
the greatest mining firm in the world at that time--without encumbering
wife and with the highest of recommendations, but with a singularly
youthful appea