“Hush, hush, times are altered; it is you who can teach me now. Teach me, teach me; how does ambition replace love? How does the desire to rise in life become the all-mastering passion, and, should it prosper, the all-atoning consolation of our life? We can never be as happy, though we rose to the throne of the Caesars, as we dream that we could have been, had Heaven but permitted us to dwell in the obscurest village, side by side with the woman we love.” Tom was exceedingly startled by such a burst of irrepressible passion from the man who had told him that, though friends were found only once in a life, sweethearts were as plentiful as blackberries. Again he swept his hand over his forehead, and replied hesitatingly: “I can’t pretend to say what maybe the case with others. But to judge by my own case, it seems to me this: a young man who, out of his own business, has nothing to interest or excite him, finds content, interest, and excitement when he falls in love; and then, whether for good or ill, he thinks there is nothing like love in the world, he don’t care a fig for ambition then. Over and over again did my poor uncle ask me to come to him at Luscombe, and represent all the worldly advantage it would be to me; but I could not leave the village in which Jessie lived, and, besides, I felt myself unfit to be anything higher than I was. But when I had been some time at Luscombe, and gradually got accustomed to another sort of people, and another sort of talk, then I began to feel interest in the same objects that interested those about me; and when, partly by mixing with better educated men, and partly by the pains I took to educate myself, I felt that I might now more easily rise above my uncle’s rank of life than two years ago I could have risen above a farrier’s forge, then the ambition to rise did stir in me, and grew stronger every day. Sir, I don’t think you can wake up a man’s intellect but what you wake with it emulation. And, after all, emulation is ambition.” “Then, I suppose, I have no emulation in me, for certainly I have no ambition.” “That I can’t believe, sir; other thoughts may cover it over and keep it down for a time. But sooner or later, it will force its way to the top, as it has done with me. To get on in life, to be respected by those who know you, more and more as you grow older, I call that a manly desire. I am sure it comes as naturally to an Englishman as--as--” “As the wish to knock down some other Englishman who stands in his way does. I perceive now that you were always a very ambitious man, Tom; the ambition has only taken another direction. Caesar might have been “‘But the first wrestler on the green.’ “And now, I suppose, you abandon the idea of travel: you will return to Luscombe, cured of all regret for the loss of Jessie; you will marry the young lady you mention, and rise, through progressive steps of alderman and mayor, into the rank of member for Luscombe.”