The Rajah of Dah | Page 4

said the boy with his face flushed. "You
laugh because I said some of us: I meant some of you. Look at the
discoveries that have been made; look at the wonders brought home;
look at that, for instance," cried the boy, snatching up the piece of pale,
yellowish-green, metallic-looking stone. "See there; by your
discoveries you were able to tell me that this piece which you brought
home from abroad is pyrites, and--"
"Hold your tongue, you young donkey. I did not bring that stone home
from abroad, for I picked it up the other day under the cliff at Ventnor,
and you might have known what it was from any book on chemistry or
mineralogy.--So you want to travel?"
"Yes, uncle, yes!" cried the boy.
"Very well, then; get plenty of books, and read them in an easy-chair,
and then you can follow the footsteps of travellers all round the world
without getting shipwrecked, or having your precious soft young body
damaged in any way."
"Oh dear! oh dear!" sighed the boy; "it's very miserable not to be able
to do as you like."
"No, it isn't, stupid! It's very miserable to be able to do nearly as you
like. Nobody can quite, from the Queen down to the dirtiest little boy in
the streets. The freest man finds that he has the hardest master to
satisfy--himself."
"Oh, I say, uncle!" cried the boy; "don't, don't, please; that doesn't seem
like you. It's like being at the rectory. Don't you begin to lecture me."

"Oh, very well, Ned. I've done."
"That's right; and remember you said example was better than precept."
"And so it is, Ned."
"Very well then, uncle!" cried the boy; "I want to follow your example
and go abroad."
Johnstone Murray brought his fist down bang upon the table of his
study--the table covered with books, minerals, bird-skins, fossils, bones,
and the miscellaneous odds and ends which a naturalist delights in
collecting round him in his half study, half museum, where as in this
case, everything was so sacred that the housemaid dared hardly enter
the place, and the result was a cloud of dust which immediately made
Ned sneeze violently. Then his uncle sneezed; then Ned sneezed; then
they both sneezed together, and again and again.
"Oh, I say, uncle!" cried Ned; and he sneezed once more.
"Er tchishou! Bless the king!--queen I mean," said the naturalist.
"You shouldn't, uncle," cried the boy, now laughing immoderately, as
his uncle sneezed and choked, and wiped his eyes.
"It was all your fault, you young nuisance. Dear me, this dust--"
"Ought to be saved for snuff."
"Now, look here, Ned," said Mr Murray at last. "I do not say that some
day when you have grown up to be a man, I may not ask you to
accompany me on an expedition into some new untried country, such
as the part of the Malay Peninsula I am off to visit next."
"How long will it be before you consider I am a man, uncle?"
"Let's see; how old are you now?"
"Sixteen turned, uncle."

"Humph! Well, suppose we say at one and twenty."
"Five years!" cried the boy in despair. "Why, by that time there will not
be a place that you have not searched. There will be nothing left to
discover, and--" (a sneeze), "there's that dust again."
"You miserable young ignoramus! what are you talking about?" cried
the naturalist. "Why, if a man could live to be a hundred, and have a
hundred lives, he would not achieve to a hundredth part of what there is
to be discovered in this grand--this glorious world."
He stood up with one hand resting on the table, and began to gesticulate
with the other.
"Why, my dear boy, before I was your age I had begun to take an active
interest in natural history, and for considerably over twenty years now I
have been hard at work, with my eyes gradually opening to the wonders
on every hand, till I begin now to feel sorrow and delight at how little I
know and how much there is yet to learn."
"Yes, uncle; go on," cried the boy, eagerly.
"You said I was not to lecture you."
"But I like it when you talk that way."
"Ah, Ned, Ned! there's no fear of one's getting to the end," said Murray,
half sadly; "life is far too short for that, but the life of even the most
humble naturalist is an unceasing education. He is always
learning--always finding out how beautiful are the works of the Creator.
They are endless, Ned, my boy. The grand works of creation are spread
out before us, and the thirst for knowledge increases, and the draughts
we drink from the great fount of nature are