The old woodcuts of daring hunters and charging lions inspired me with unrest and longing--the longing to bid the farm farewell and start down the road for Africa.
Africa! What a picture it conjured up in my fancy! Then, as even now, it symbolized a world of adventurous possibilities; and in my boyhood fancy, it lay away off there--somewhere--vaguely--beyond mountains and deserts and oceans, a vast, mysterious, unknown land, that swarmed with inviting dangers and alluring romance.
One by one my other youthful ambitions have been laid away.

I have given up hope of ever being an Indian fighter out on the plains, because the pesky redskins have long since ceased to need my strong right arm to quell them.

I also have yielded up my ambition to be a sailor, or rather, that branch of the profession in which I hoped to specialize--piracy--because, for some regretful reason, piracy has lost much of its charm in these days of great liners.

There is no treasure to search for any more, and the golden age of the splendid clipper ships, with their immense spread of canvas, has given way to the unromantic age of the grimy steamer, about which there is so little to appeal to the imagination.

Consequently, lion hunting is about the only thing left--except wars, and they are few and far between.
And so, after suffering this "lion-hunting" ambition to lie fallow for many years, I at last reached a day when it seemed possible to realize it.