But an interview with the music conductor dispelled
illusions. Ned learnt from him that improvisations were not
admissible in an opera house; and when the conductor told him what
would be required of him he began to lose interest in his musical
career. As he stood jingling his pence on the steps of the opera
house a man went by who had crossed with Ned, and the two getting
into conversation, Ned was asked if he could draw a map according
to scale. It would profit him nothing to say no; he remembered he
had drawn maps in the school in Manchester. A bargain was struck!
he was to get ten pounds for his map! He ordered a table; he
pinned out the paper, and the map was finished in a fortnight. It
was of a mining district, and having nothing to do when it was
finished he thought he would like to see the mine; the owners
encouraged him to go there, and he did some mining in the morning--
in the evenings he played his fiddle. Eventually he became a
journalist.
He wandered and wrote, and wandered again, until one day, finding
himself in New York, he signed an agreement and edited a
newspaper. But he soon wearied of expressing the same opinions,
and as the newspaper could not change its opinions Ned volunteered
to go to Cuba and write about the insurgents. And he wrote
articles that inflamed the Americans against the Spaniards, and
went over to the American lines to fight when the Americans
declared war against Spain, and fought so well that he might have
become a general if the war had lasted.
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