The Record of Nicholas Freydon: An AutobiographyDawson, A. J. (Alec John)
General
The Record of Nicholas Freydon: An Autobiography
Dawson, A. J. (Alec John)
Fiction
In the Old World the adventurous-minded, enterprising youth turns
naturally from contemplation of the humdrum security of the
multitudinously trodden path in which he finds himself to thoughts of
the large new lands; of those comparatively untried and certainly
uncrowded uplands of the world, which, apart from the other chances
and attractions they offer, possess the advantage of lying oversea,
from the beaten track--over the hills and far away. 'Here,' he may be
supposed to feel, as he gazes about him in his familiar, Old World
environment, 'there is nothing but what has been tried and exploited,
sifted through and through time and again, all adown the centuries.
What chance is there for me among the crowd, where there is nothing
new, nothing untried? Whereas, out there--' Ah, the magic of those
words, 'Out there!' and 'Over there!' for home-bred youth! It is good,
wholesome magic, too, and it will be a bad day for the Old World, a
disastrous day for England, when it ceases to exercise its powers upon
the hearts and imaginations of the youth of our stock.
Well, and in the New World, in the case of such sprawling young giants
among the nations of the future as Australia, what is the master dream
of adventurous and enterprising youth there? Australia, like Canada,
has its call of the west and the north, with their appealing tale of
untried potentialities. Canada has also, across its merely figurative
and political southern border, a vast and teeming world, reaching down
to the equator, and comprising almost every possible diversity of
human effort and natural resource. Australia, the purely British
island continent, is more isolated. But, broadly speaking, the very
facts which make the enterprising Old World youth fix his gaze upon
the New World cause the same type of youth in Australia, for example,
to look home-along across the seas, toward those storied islands of
the north which, it may be, he has never seen: the land which, in some
cases, even his parents have not seen since their childhood.
'Here,' he may be imagined saying, as he looks about him among the raw
uprising products of the new land, where the past is nothing and all
hope centres upon the future, 'Here everything is yet to do;
everything is in the making. Here, money's the only reward. Who's to
judge of one's accomplishment here? Fame has no accredited deputy in
this unmade world. Whereas, back there, at home--' Oh, the magic of
those words 'At Home!' and 'In England!' alike for those who once have
seen the white cliffs fade out astern, and for those who have seen
them only in dreams, bow on!
Everything has been tried and accomplished there. The very thought
that speeds the emigrant pulls at the heart-strings of the immigrant;
drawing home one son from the outposts, while thrusting out another
toward the outposts, there to learn what England means, and to earn
and deserve the glory of his birthright. That, in a nutshell, is the
real history of the British Empire....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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