But six months were to intervene before the beginning
of my duties--how to fill that time profitably was the question. I longed
to travel, having scarcely been out of England during my life. Some one
suggested the position of surgeon on one of the great steamers running
between England and Australia. The idea of a long sea-voyage was
seductive, for I had been suffering from over-study, though the position
itself was not very distinguished. But in those days I cared more for
pleasing myself than for what might become a newly-made professor, and I
was prepared to say with a renowned Irish dean: "Dignity and I might be
married, for all the relations we are."
I secured the position with humiliating ease and humiliating smallness of
pay. The steamer's name was the 'Fulvia'. It was one of the largest
belonging to the Occidental Company. It carried no emigrants and had a
passenger list of fashionable folk. On the voyage out to Australia the
weather was pleasant, save in the Bay of Biscay; there was no sickness on
board, and there were many opportunities for social gaiety, the
cultivation of pleasant acquaintances, and the encouragement of that
brisk idleness which aids to health.
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