From this we may judge of the chances of remunerative employment for a raw unfledged youth, with a smattering of classical learning.

At first they simply "loaf" (as it is called there) on their acquaintances and friends.

At the end of six months their clothes are beginning to look shabby; they feel they _ought_ to do something, and they make day by day the terrible discovery that there is nothing for them to do in their own rank of life.

Many a poor clergyman's son, sooner than return to the home which has been so pinched to furnish forth his passage money and outfit, takes a shepherd's billet, though he generally makes a very bad shepherd for the first year or two; or drives bullocks, or perhaps wanders vaguely over the country, looking for work, and getting food and lodging indeed, for inhospitality is unknown, but no pay.

Sometimes they go to the diggings, only to find that money is as necessary there as anywhere, and that they are not fitted to dig in wet holes for eight or ten hours a day.