My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

Irving, Terry, Kipling, Caine, Corelli, and even the name of Gladstone, were only names to them. Whether they were islands or racehorses they knew not and cared not. With me it was different. Where I obtained my information, unless it was born in me, I do not know. We took none but the local paper regularly, I saw few books, had the pleasure of conversing with an educated person from the higher walks of life about once in a twelvemonth, yet I knew of every celebrity in literature, art, music, and drama; their world was my world, and in fancy I lived with them. My parents discouraged me in that species of foolishness. They had been fond of literature and the higher arts, but now, having no use for them, had lost interest therein.
    I was discontented and restless, and longed unendurably to be out in the stream of life. “Action! Action! Give me action!” was my cry. My mother did her best with me according to her lights. She energetically preached at me. All the old saws and homilies were brought into requisition, but without avail. It was like using common nostrums on a disease which could be treated by none but a special physician.
    I was treated to a great deal of harping on that tiresome old string, “Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with all your might.” It was daily dinned into my ears that the little things of life were the noblest, and that all the great people I mooned about said the same. I usually retorted to the effect that I was well aware that it was noble, and that I could write as good an essay on it as any philosopher. It was all very well for great people to point out the greatness of the little, empty, humdrum life. Why didn’t they adopt it themselves?
    The toad beneath the harrow knows exactly where each tooth point goes. The butterfly upon the road preaches contentment to the toad.
    I wasn’t anxiousto patronize the dull kind of tame nobility of the toad; I longed for a few of the triumphs of the butterfly, decried though they are as hollow bubbles. I desired life while young enough to live, and quoted as my motto:
    Though the pitcher that goes to the sparkling rill
Too oft gets broken at last,
There are scores of others its place to fill
When its earth to the earth is cast.
Keep that pitcher at home, let it never roam,
But lie like a useless clod;
Yet sooner or later the hour will come
When its chips are thrown to the sod.
Is it wise, then, say, in the waning day,
When the vessel is crack’d and old,
To cherish the battered potter’s clay
As though it were virgin gold?
Take care of yourself, dull, boorish elf,
Though prudent and sage you seem;
Your pitcher will break on the musty shelf,
And mine by the dazzling stream.
    I had sense sufficient to see the uselessness of attempting to be other than I was. In these days of fierce competition there was no chance for me—opportunity, not talent, was the main requisite. Fate had thought fit to deny me even one advantage or opportunity, thus I was helpless. I set to work to cut my coat according to my cloth. I manfully endeavored to squeeze my spirit into “that state of life into which it has pleased God to call me.” I crushed, compressed, and bruised, but as fast as I managed it on one side it burst out on another, and defied me to cram it into the narrow box of Possum Gully.
    The restless throbbings and burnings
That hope unsatisfied brings,
The weary longings and yearnings
For the mystical better things,
Are the sands on which is reflected
The pitilessmoving lake,
Where the wanderer falls dejected,
By a thirst he never can slake.
    In a vain endeavor to slake that cruel thirst my soul groped in strange dark places. It went out in quest of a god, and finding one not, grew weary.
    By the unknown way that the atmosphere of the higher life penetrated to me, so came a knowledge of the sin and sorrow abroad in the world—the cry of the millions oppressed, downtrodden, God-forsaken! The wheels of social