Lazy as William Rufus Holly had been at school and college, he had still
thought a good deal, even when he seemed only sleeping; perhaps he
thought more because he slept so much, because he studied little and read
a great deal. He always knew what everybody thought--that he would never
do anything but play cricket till he got too heavy to run, and then would
sink into a slothful, fat, and useless middle and old age; that his life
would be a failure. And he knew that they were right; that if he stayed
where he could live an easy life, a fat and easy life he would lead; that
in a few years he would be good for nothing except to eat and sleep--no
more. One day, waking suddenly from a bad dream of himself so fat as to
be drawn about on a dray by monstrous fat oxen with rings through their
noses, led by monkeys, he began to wonder what he should do--the hardest
thing to do; for only the hardest life could possibly save him from
failure, and, in spite of all, he really did want to make something of
his life. He had been reading the story of Sir John Franklin's Arctic
expedition, and all at once it came home to him that the only thing for
him to do was to go to the Far North and stay there, coming back about
once every ten years to tell the people in the cities what was being done
in the wilds.
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