The Bushman — Life in a New CountryLandor, Edward Wilson
History
The Bushman — Life in a New Country
Landor, Edward Wilson
Western Australia -- Description and travel
This necessity for keeping up appearances in order to move in that
rank of life which his business requires him to occupy, is the
heaviest tax imposed upon the income of an Englishman. How often
does it draw from him all his profits, leaving him to lament how
little he is enabled to lay by annually for his children! Many times,
without doubt, he wishes he durst retire to a cottage too small to
admit the visits of the heartless acquaintance who form his
"fashionable" world. Does their society afford him or his family any
real happiness? Is it not rather the cause of many heart-burnings to
him and to them? How much happier he feels he should be, had he
never looked abroad for happiness, but sought it only around his own
hearth! To see his daughters elegantly attired, would gratify him
extremely, were it not for the unwelcome reminiscences of expense.
But would they look less lovely to his eyes, or be less dear to his
heart, when moving about him in the useful performance of domestic
duties, clad in homely garments, and thinking more of him and home
than of visiting and display?
How economically, and how happily too, might he live, were his own
house his world, and his wife and children the only beings for whose
opinion he cared! But alas! these are the persons whose opinion is
of least importance in his pursuit of fortune. He must do as the
world does if he would secure its smiles, and is compelled to think
less of happiness than of gain.
Is such a man happier, leading such a life, than he would be as a
colonist? Here -- ever blessed be the recollection! -- there is no
necessity for sacrificing peace of mind to appearance. The man whose
conduct proves him to be of gentlemanly mould, is everywhere treated
as an equal; and though his occupation and mode of living be ever so
humble, he loses nothing in the consideration of his
fellow-colonists. The half-pay officer, or gentleman farmer, who
occasionally drives his own cart, or sows the seed which he has
purchased in the market, is not thought less qualified to act as a
magistrate, nor is less respected by the great and small in his
neighbourhood. His cares are all directed towards obtaining
substantial comforts for his family, and not towards making a display
in the eyes of the little world around him.
Conscious that he is respected only for his character as an upright
man, and that as every one knows he is not wealthy, it would be
ridiculous to affect the appearance of wealth, he wears the coarsest
garments with more pleasure than the finest coat, and draws all his
happiness from domestic sources. His sons and daughters equally
indifferent to show -- though the latter, at least, are always neatly
dressed -- are busied with their different duties, all tending to
promote the general comfort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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