STORY OF A “WASTER.”

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3181, 29 March 1911, Page 3

STORY OF A “WASTER.”

“ DECEIVED YOU

FELLOWS TO

THE END.”

A writer in the “Spectator” tolls the story of a university man whose life wasVasted through want of steady application and who, at the same time, pretended to achieve success withoutworking for it. “At Cambridge he ‘cut' all his lectures, seldom, visited his tutors, gave his friends the impression of leading a. slack, dissipated life, and then astonished us all by obtaining two first in the history tripos. Afterwards I discovered that he worked frantically in vacations, ami at all spare moments when unobserved. It was the same in games;' He would practise assiduously in private, and then astonish all and sundry with the ease with which he played golf or cricket, as the case mightbe." Much the same thing happened to him when he fell in love. Here, again, was a chance of salvation. But, as usual, his passion for pose proved his own undoing. She found him out, and under this unveiling of his true self lie could not live.” At the Bar he got his chance and missed it. Then he went to India, but only for a \ ear. On his return to England one of his relatives died and he was left comfortably off. But the good fortune came too late, for he was used up. Says the “Spectator” writer:—“l chanced to he with him when he died. An ordinary middle-class bedroom darkened windows, and on the bed the dying man, worn out at 20, not through overwork or underwork, but simply through waste of his many brilliant qualities. As the flame of life flickered up, as popular novels inform us it always does, before it died out for ever, lie whispered to nle, ‘One thing I’ve done; I v deceived you fellows to the end.”