conceits of the mind. But these never seriously
affected my pocket.

There is perhaps something rather distasteful in the idea of so much
economic prudence in one so young. A certain generous carelessness is
proper to youth. Well, I had none of it, at this time, in money
matters. And, distasteful or not, I am glad of it, since, at all
events, it had this advantage: at a very critical period I was
preserved from the grosser and more perilous indulgences of youth.
When the time did arrive at which I ceased to be very careful in money
spending, I had presumably acquired a little more balance, and was a
little safer than in those adolescent Sydney years.

Here again my qualities were presumably the product of my condition
and circumstances. To be left quite alone in the world while yet a
child, as I had been, does, I apprehend, stimulate a certain worldly
prudence in regard, at all events, to so obvious a matter as the
balance of income and expenditure. I felt that if I were ever stranded
and penniless there would be no one in the whole world to lend me a
helping hand, or to save me from being cut adrift from all that I had
come to hold precious, and flung back into the slough of manual
labour--for that, curiously enough, is how I then regarded it. Not, of
course, that I had found manual work in itself unpleasant in any way;
but that I then considered my escape from it had carried me into a
social and mental atmosphere superior to that which the manual worker
could reach.

Except when he was absent from Sydney, Mr. Rawlence always received
his friends at the Macquarie Street studio on Sundays, and none was
more regular in attendance than myself. It would be very easy, of
course, to be sarcastic at Mr. Rawlence's expense; to poke fun at the
well-to-do gentleman approaching middle age, who clung to the pretence
of being a working artist, and to avoid criticism, or because more
mature workers would not seek his society, liked to surround himself
with neophytes--a Triton among minnows. And indeed, as I found, there
were those--some old enough to know better, and others young enough to
be more generous--who were not above adopting this attitude even
whilst enjoying their victim's hospitality; aye, and enjoying it
greedily.

But neither then nor at any subsequent period was I tempted to
ridicule a man uniformly kind and helpful to me; and this, not at all
because I blinded myself to his weaknesses and imperfections, but
be