TEXAS AS A CAREER.
WE suppose that, on the whole, Mr. Hughes is right ; and that for lads who can "rough it" easily, and like out-of-doot life, and have the abiFty to utilise labour, stock- breeding or sheep-keeping in Texas affords a fairish chance of a career. In the very amusing little book which he has just published, with the letters received from his three nephews engaged in those occupations, he does not affirm more than that; and, as far as his evidence goes, even that is not proved beyond doubt. His nephews, to begin with, are above average. One of them took a clerkship in the Aylesbury Dairy Company on 250 a year,—increased subsequently—and saved £130 within eighteen months,—a feat which revealed a man almost predestined to success. The "power of accumulation," as Lord Beaconsfield used to call it, is not a high moral quality as it is so often described, but a rather low one; but its possessor, if he has any sort of chance and average health, and a dislike of drink, rarely fails to win the material battle of life. Another - of the lads has what the Yankees call " faculty " in an unusual degree, learning to drive sheep over the open country, for instance, a most difficult business, in a few weeks, and being as ready with his hands as a Chinese ship- carpenter ; while the third had resolution enough, not only to quit a great studio for cattle-breeding, but to refuse when earnestly pressed to write about it. The writer remembers him as a child, and he had the "root of the matter" of life, the capacity for going his own way, in him even then. All three, too, belong to the kind of men who can ride anything for any distance, eat anything that will sustain life, without getting dysentery, and find their way over any country without guides, the last a capacity as rare as generalship. The history of such men is hardly an example, nor do we understand that they have been successful in any very inspiriting way. They make some money, and their ranche improves, but the life is still a terribly hard one. The climate in Southern Texas is sometimes villainous, rattlesnakes are quite plentiful, one meets scorpions "pro- miscuously," the day's duties are as hard as those of a London hansom-cab driver; and as for the home-life, we can see, both from Mr. Hughes's book and Mr. Alldridge's on Ranche-work, that camping-out in a hut on Salisbury Plain from July to January must be exceedingly like it. Of civilisation as we understand it there is next to none, of recreation as little as may be, and of society a mixture, often disagreeable. If you are not reserved, and not uppish, and not stingy, and can hold your tongue under abuse, and can ride hard, and eat what comes, and take care.of yourself when necessary, the ranche man will be your brother and the ranche man may be a graduate, or a particularly rough butcher's boy, as happens. You are not exactly beyond the chance of ruin, either. Mr. Hughes's nephews say nothing of others' failures,—indeed, unless they have been severely edited, they are good-natured to a fault—but we believe of every three ordinary lads who go out, one takes to drinking, one refuses the life, and either goes away or dies, and only one fights through. Life is by no means all beer and skittles in Texas, any more than anywhere else ; but we should say un- usually hard, "aggravating," and chequered, especially by the excessive importance of rude health.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to read either Mr. Hughes's or Mr. Alldridge's book without agreeing with them that, on the whole, the life has its temptations. After all, the Hughes boys, with all their fine qualities, might have found little scope at home. The dairy clerk must have succeeded if he had had to break stones, but he might have eaten his heart out; and the high out-of-door qualities of the three would have had little or no scope. Texas may be as bad, except in fertility, as Salisbury Plain; but then one can get a bit of Texas, while the Plain is as much reserved is if it were walled-in. -Unless a man is a squire, or can stock a Northern farm, there is nothing for such men to do in England except as subordinates, and as subordinates, the professionals would always undersell them. They hsi, to live in Texas like rough-riders or graziers' mep !-Is;,- 'then there is, if they survive, the certainty c,`: t., ces such as
a y never open here,—chances of wealth expre ten in the
,4ri hundred, chances of competence expressible ri_thirty in the hundred, and chances of independence expressible, healtfr-80,4 granted, by, say, 90 per cent. The sharp apprenticeship leads to results; and for men with good spirits, who can see that life on one side of it must be a picnic, the constant presence of hope, the perfect independence, and the fact of leading, a life more or less creative, are facts outweighing all tem- porary disagreeables, even if they present themselves in. the form of snakes or scorpions, or of sheep that not only run away, but run a hundred different ways. Besides, it is vain to deny that, for Englishmen, at all events, caste is worth keeping, that our people seldom benefit by going down in the world, and that in the ranche-life of Texas, as in the bush-life of Australia, the sense of going down is absent. Liberty is an ennobling fact to those who do not suffer from it; and the men who can on the prairie make a home for themselves, lose half their force, and more than half, in the ser- vitudes which, under one form or another, are the doom of English youngsters without capital. As to there being any de- gradation in the life, that is all nonsense. It is precisely the life led by the English Squire Westerns when they bred stock for themselves, with this disadvantage,—that the adventurers are badly housed, housed like cottagers ; and this advantage,— that labour being dear, they have to be their own bailiffs, and thoroughly learn their own work. Fortunes cannot now be made in Texas without capital, unless the young man has exceptional qualities, and is accepted as working partner in a ranche ; but the ownership of a large, well-stocked farming estate, without rent and with cash profits, can be attained by energy, hard work, and luck ; and that is what, two hundred years ago, men quite as well placed as the Hughes family thought success. And it is success, if only we can keep the London idea of success well out of our minds, and believe in happiness without quick- thinking society, fresh telegrams, and a podded life. Life is not podded in Texas, even if you make half-a-million dollars.
The only point upon which we have serious doubts of Mr. Hughes's theory is the old one,—his constantly reiterated asser- tion that a man can go ranching, and succeed, and remain an accomplished gentleman all the same. One in a thousand may, as one in a thousand might keep a small shop all his life and do the same thing, but with the majority circumstances will pre- vail. The accomplishments are so useless, that they are given up. Books are so few, and the body so fatigued, that the habit of reading dies away. Material interests press so sharply and so constantly, that all other interests become insipid, and, after a time, tiresome. The outdoor life masters the in- door, and it is indoors that the cultivation which Mr. Hughes values so much is principally kept up. The grazier does not forget his Greek so much as become careless about Greek, or even slightly contemptuous of Greek, in comparison with veter- inary knowledge. A few may struggle on, and it is a curious fact, not at all explained, that Englishmen who take to the rough life do not in the same proportion throw off the weight of civili- sation as Dutch Boers, and German stock-breeders, and French planters are apt to do. Either their civilisation has gone deeper, or, as we should rather believe, the intensity of the English desire to renew England everywhere, acts as a protective; but the natural tendency of the rough life, when it is successful, must be to produce Squire Westerns. If the tendency does not come out in the first generation, it does in the second, as successful men in Australia and South Africa know so well, that they either succumb and complain, or make any sacri- fice to give their sons a fresh bath in old-world culture. It seems to us useless to deny that there is this drawback to emigration, or to assert that the young Hughes's letters are precisely what they would have written at Oxbridge, or to question that if they go on living in South Texas their children will be squires of the old and not of the new type. Why should they not be ? Strike off the port-wine and its consequences, and, there were many good qualities in the old men,—efficiency, courage, kindliness, and a governing power which, if rude in kind, was often very high in degree. The culti- vated " masher " of our day, and even the hard-working -young professional, has often faults quite as grave as those of the old squire. We are elevating culture into a kind of nobility, and forget that it is little in itself, and often improves the brain at the cost of deteriorating the character. The unsuccessful barrister, lawyer, doctor, and officer, in England is often a lower man than the colonist who has adapted himself to his conditions, and who can do everything, except study, better than his rival. We suppose it is wise that, even if a lad is going to a ranche, he should be educated ; but even on that subject a doubt will intrude. Had he not better know his own literature thoroughly, than all the things which we are now pleased to believe constitute educa- tion Be that as it may, we feel satisfied that when rancho- life is discussed as a career, the drawback of intellectual roughen- ing, if it is a drawback, must be taken into consideration, and that Mr. Hughes has always been upon this point far too san- guine. Better so, of course, than set up a low ideal; but when our sons' future is in question, it is well to look at the facts, and for all but exceptional men the facts of Texas, like the facts of Cornell University, and the facts of English aristocratic life, indicate that success in out-of-door pursuits and advance in indoor culture are very seldom compatible.
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