CHAPTER VII
The influences that decided the purchase of the Hub were emotional, at any rate, not rational; there lay some reaction in me, as of revolt. "You can do things out here you could not do at home," ran like a song through the heart all day long, and life seemed to hold its arms wide open. Fortunes were quickly made. Speculation was rife. Pork went up and wheat went down, and thousands were made or lost in a few hours. No enterprise was despised, provided it succeeded. All this had its effect upon an impressionable and ignorant youth whose mind now touched so-called real life for the first time. The example of others had its influence, too. The town was sprinkled with young Englishmen, but untrained Englishmen the country did not need, though it needed their money; and this money they speedily exchanged, just as I had done, for experience—and then tried to find work.
The pathos of it all was, though, that for an average young Englishman to find a decent job was impossible. I was among the unsuccessful ones. Kay was another, but Kay and myself were now—we thought—to prove the exception.
"We'll show 'em!" was the way Kay's sanguine twenty-three years phrased it. We both knew men of splendid education and real ability, earning precarious livings in positions that would have been ludicrous if they were not so pathetic. Men from Oxford and Cambridge, with first rate classical training, were slinging drinks behind bars, or running about the country persuading the farmers to insure their stacks and outhouses; others with knowledge of languages and pronounced literary talent were adding figures in subordinate positions in brokers' offices. But by far the greater number were working as common labourers for small farmers all over the country.
