Its influence upon me, for example, tended, I am sure, to give me a pronounced distaste for the coarse and vulgar sort of dissipation which very often engaged the leisure of my office companions, and other youths of similar occupation in Sydney. It may be that the causes behind my aloofness from mere vulgar frivolity, and worse, were pretty mixed: part pride, or even conceit, and part prudence or parsimony. No matter. The influence was helpful, for the abstention was real, and the distaste grew always more rooted as time wore on. Also, the same influence tended to make me more fastidious, more critical, less crude than I might otherwise have been. It led me to give more serious attention to pictures, music, and literature of the less ephemeral sort than I might otherwise have given. It was not that Mr. Rawlence and his friends advised one to study Shakespeare, or to attend the better sort of concerts, or to learn something of art and criticism. But talk that I heard in that studio did make me feel that it was eminently desirable I should inform myself more fully in these matters. Listening to a discussion there of some quite worthless thing more than once moved me to the investigation of something of real value. I was still tolerably credulous, and when a man's casual reference suggested that he and every one else was naturally intimate with this or that, I would make it my business, so far as might be, really to obtain some knowledge of the matter. I assumed, often quite mistakenly, no doubt, that every one else present had this particular knowledge. Thus the spirit of emulation helped me as it might never have done but for Mr. Rawlence and his sumptuous studio, so rich in everything save examples of his own work. * * * * * I fancy it must have been fully a year after my arrival in Sydney that I met Mr. Foster, the editor of the _Chronicle_, as I was walking down from Sussex Street to Circular Quay one evening. 'Ah, Freydon,' he said; 'what an odd coincidence! I was this moment thinking of you, and of something you said last Sunday at Rawlence's. I can't use the article you sent me. It's-- Well, for one thing, it's rather too much like fiction; like a story, you know. But, tell me, what do you do for a living?' 'I'm a correspondence clerk, at present, in a Sussex Street business house.' 'H'm! Yes, I rather thought something of the sort--and very good practical training, too, I should say. But I gather you are keen on press work, eh?' I gave an eager affirmative, and the editor nodded. 'Ye--es,' he said musingly as we turned aside into Wynyard Square. 'I should think you'd do rather well at it. But, mind you, I fancy there are bigger rewards to be won in business.' 'If there are, I don't want them,' I rejoined, with a warmth that surprised myself.