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. “They missed their chance when it came,” Kay repeated. “We won’t miss ours. A chance like the Hub won’t come twice.” A year of disagreeable, uncongenial work and then--success! Retire! Off to the primeval woods, canoes, Indians, camp fires, books ... a dozen dreams flamed up. Within a month we had completed the purchase, and the Hub opened with flying colours and high hopes; the newspapers gave us what they called a “send off”; both “House of Lords” and “House of Commons” were packed; the cash-registers clicked and rang all day, and the Hub, swept and garnished, fairly sparkled with the atmosphere of success, congratulations, and promise of good business. Billy Bingham’s association with it was a thing of the past; it became the most respectable place of its kind in the whole town.