The Rajah of Dah | Page 4

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 more delicious each time we raise the cup."
Ned's chin was now upon his thumbs, his elbows on the table once more, and his eyes sparkled with intense delight as he gazed on the animated countenance of the man before him; for that face was lit up, the broad forehead looked noble, and his voice was now deep and low, and now rang out loudly, as if he were some great teacher declaiming to his pupil on the subject nearest to his heart. Till it suddenly dawned upon him that, instead of quenching, he was increasing the thirst of the boy gazing excitedly in his eyes, and he stopped short in the lamest way, just as he was rising up to the highest pitch of his