Читать книгу The Last Chance: A Tale of the Golden West онлайн

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After years of settled official work—not hard or distasteful, but still compulsory and exacting—there is always an exhilarating feeling, resulting from the knowledge that henceforth the trammels of regulated occupation are loosed for ever. Like the freed bird darting into the blithe sunshine, the wide world seems opened, as in our boyhood, to an exhaustless series of wonders and privileges impossible in the earlier stages of life for lack of time, opportunity, money—if you will. Travelling, the very salt of life, has been sparely, ssss1 if at all, enjoyed. There are cities to visit—art treasures in which to revel—every kind and degree of rational enjoyment open to him and those dear ones whose welfare had always been his highest aim and consideration.

It is a matter generally of chastened, peaceful enjoyment to the released official of any degree, when, as dear ‘Elia’ phrases it, he can ‘go home for good’—with an income sufficient to provide suitably for the declining years of life. But what must be his feelings when such a man is suddenly translated into a position of affluence—to wealth beyond his wildest dreams? Hardly that, perhaps, as every one connected with a goldfield can dream, and generally does, of the lease so slow ‘in beating the water,’ the reef so unwilling to ‘jump’ from pennyweights to ounces, floating him out to measureless wealth, celebrity, and world-wide fame. Now, however, for the Commissioner all the anxieties, uncertainties, and regrets of daily life had suddenly come to an end. The ‘Last Chance’ was a proved, triumphant success—seven to ten ounces to the ton, the great reef doing better and better as it went down—the richest claim in the richest and, for the future, the largest goldfield in Australia—the end of doubt, debt, and difficulty had come. “His fortune was made!” The well-worn phrase in commonest use among all classes and conditions, trite and terse, even vulgarly so, but how comprehensive! The open sesame to how many doors, gates, and treasure-caves of delights innumerable, jealously guarded in the past. What a heaven in anticipation seemed opening ssss1 before him! But even then a half-regretful feeling arose—a sigh escaped for the old, fully occupied life of ‘pleasure and pain,’ when ‘the hardest day was never then too hard.’ Certainly there had been doubts, wearying anxieties, troubles, burdens of debt, disappointments; but, as a set-off, the family had enjoyed, on the whole, excellent health, high spirits, and reasonable comfort.