Two appointments at the same time to one family were out of the question, so the young man stepped aside as became a dutiful son.

But see Europe he would, and if he could not go in the Government's service and at the public expense as a dabbler with official sealing wax, he would go as a private citizen.

The record he preserved of that journey gives a marvellous picture of the man.
In London he met a Californian, in with all the sporting world, on intimate terms with the champion prize-fighter of England, the Queen's pages, and the Tattersalls crowd.

Chaperoned by this curious countryman, McAllister's first introduction to London life took the form of a dinner at a great house in the suburbs.

It was a strange house and a strange company, more in keeping with the eighteenth century than the middle of the nineteenth.