into greatness; but for the jolly good-fellow, with half a dozen boon-companions, enduring success is an impossibility.” Eustace had never before heard his uncle speak so seriously of himself and his own set. “You may do great things yet, Uncle Dan,” he said, earnestly; “let me give up this Berkshire engagement, and stop in town to work with you. Cut all the boon-companions, and let us go in earnestly for honest hard work. I want to see your name allied to some perfect book; your talent gets frittered away upon anonymous reviews and essays. Oliver Goldsmith wrote the _Vicar of Wakefield_, and you know he was something of a Bohemian.” “He was a Bohemian, who lived among such men as Johnson and Burke and Reynolds,” answered Daniel; “Bohemia has degenerated since those days. And how many more stories, as perfect as the _Vicar of Wakefield_, might _not_ simple-hearted Noll have written if he had not been something of a Bohemian! Your great workers are jog-trot stay-at-home creatures. William Shakespeare was a respectable citizen, who saved money, and settled himself comfortably in his native town before he was my age, and sued his friend for a trifling debt, and made a will in which his domestic carefulness reveals itself by allusions to bedsteads and such-like household furniture; whereby you may perceive the legendary character of all popular records of the poet’s youth, for the man who began life by stealing deer and holding horses would never have developed into the bequeather of bedsteads. So no more, lad; I shall hide my light in anonymous essays and reviews as long as I live, for I shall always be in want of ready money.” “Unless I can make a fortune big enough for us both, Uncle Dan,” said the young man, hopefully. At three-and-twenty one fancies it such an easy thing to make a fortune. All the high-roads to the temple of fame radiate before the feet of youth, and it seems a mere matter of choice whether one is to be Shakespeare or Bacon. “If you made the fortune of a Rothschild or a Pereira, you would never make me a rich man,” cried Daniel. “Turn the waters of the Pactolus into my pocket to-day, and before a month is out there will not be left one vestige of the golden river. If I were a second Midas, endowed with the power of changing vulgar wooden chairs and tables into so much solid gold, my friends and companions and the tavern-keepers would take the chairs and tables, and leave me a pauper. I must go my own way, dear boy; and the further my road lies from yours the better for you. Let me hear from you sometimes; and even if your letters are left unanswered, think that they are carried in the pocket nearest your Daniel’s heart, and that they are his consolation when the world goes ill with him.” CHAPTER VIII. GREENLANDS.