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'.