On Something (Dodo Press) Read Online Free PDF

coal-scuttle to drop.
    But Mr. Hammer, ruminating in his mind all the accidents and changes and
adventures of human life, its complexity, its unfulfilled desires, its
fading but not quite perishable ideals, well knowing how men are made
happy and how unhappy, ventured on no reply. Two great tears gathered in
his eyes, and he would have shed them, perhaps to be profusely followed by
more—he was nearly breaking down—when he looked up and saw on the wall
opposite him seven pastiches which he had made in the years gone by. There
was a Titian and a George Morland, a Chardin, two cows after Cooper, and
an impressionist picture after some Frenchman whose name he had forgotten.
    "You like pictures?" he said to the Australian, the tears still standing
in his eyes.
    "I do!" said the Australian with conviction.
    "Will you let me give you these?" said Mr. Hammer.
    The Australian protested that such things could not be allowed, but he was
a simple man, and at last he consented, for he was immensely pleased.
    "It is an ungracious thing to make conditions," said Mr. Hammer, "and I
won't make any, only I should be pleased if, in your island home…."
    "I don't live on an island," said the Australian. Mr. Hammer remembered
the map of Australia, with the water all round it, but he was too polite
to argue.
    "No, of course not," he said; "you live on the mainland; I forgot. But
anyhow, I should be so pleased if you would promise me to hang them
all together, these pictures with your Van Tromp, all in a line! I really
should be so pleased!"
    "Why, certainly," said the Australian, a little bewildered; "I will do so,
Mr. Hammer, if it can give you any pleasure."
    "The fact is," said Mr. Hammer, in a breaking voice, "I had that picture
once, and I intended it to hang side by side with these."
    It was in vain that the Australian, on hearing this, poured out
self-reproaches, offered with an expansion of soul to restore it, and then
more prudently attempted a negotiation. Mr. Hammer resolutely shook his
head.
    "I am an old man," he said, "and I have no heirs; it is not for me to
take, but to give, and if you will do what an old man begs of you, and
accept what I offer; if you will do more and of your courtesy keep all
these things together which were once familiar to me, it will be enough
reward."
    The next day, therefore, the Australian sailed off to his distant
continental home, carrying with him not only the Chardin, the Titian, the
Cooper, the impressionist picture, and the rest, but also the Van Tromp.
And three months after they all hung in a row in the great new copper room
at Warra-Mugga. What happened to them later on, and how they were all sold
together as "the Warra-Mugga Collection," I will tell you when I have the
time and you the patience. Farewell.

HIS CHARACTER
    A certain merchant in the City of London, having retired from business,
purchased for himself a private house upon the heights of Hampstead and
proposed to devote his remaining years to the education and the
establishment in life of his only son.
    When this youth (whose name was George) had arrived at the age of nineteen
his father spoke to him after dinner upon his birthday with regard to the
necessity of choosing a profession. He pointed out to him the advantages
of a commercial career, and notably of that form of useful industry which
is known as banking, showing how in that trade a profit was to be made by
lending the money of one man to another, and often of a man's own money to
himself, without engaging one's own savings or fortune.
    George, to whom such matters were unfamiliar, listened attentively, and it
seemed to him with every word that dropped from his father that a wider
and wider horizon of material comfort and worldly grandeur was spreading
out before him. He had hitherto had no idea that such great rewards were
attached to services so slight in themselves, and certainly so valueless
to the community. The career sketched out for him by his father appealed
to