“Sengizoba ngumuntu wehhovisi kakhudlwana ngoba ngisazosebenza nomeluleki ozongicija kulo msebenzi. Lokho kusho ukuthi kuzokwenzeka ngiyikhethe imidlalo mhlawumbe le eba phakathi nezinsuku. “Siyazi ukuthi bathwele kanzima abantu baseNingizimu Afrika, bazama ukuziphilisa kulesi simo somnotho esingesihle kodwa ukucwasa nodlame olubhekiswa kwabokufika, alusizi ngalutho. Sethule iThe Migration Project ukuze silungise indaba yamathuba omsebenzi kwabokufika nabakuleli. Sigxile ezindaweni ezinhlanu eThekwini, esiye sibone kuqubuka izigameko zokuhlaselwa kwabokufika kuzo,” kuchaza uKariuki. It was not that he was not ambitious, that he had not a certain longing for the academic status of Dr. Slocum and Professor Sadiman. There is a passage (I think in the Letters published by Mrs. Brookfield) which complains of the reluctance of editors to entrust him with the more serious tasks of reviewing and article-writing, of the way in which he was forced towards and confined in the paths of burlesque, satire, and the like. These editors may or may not have been wrong, but we owe them a deep debt of gratitude. It is, considering Thackerays nature and tastes, but too probable that if abundance of well-paid work in journalism of the more dignified (and therefore, on the principle or compensation, of the more ephemeral) kind had offered itself, he would have been content with the work and the gains, and would have given up that time which was meant for literature proper to the relaxation which is to nobody more tempting than to the journalist. The gods were kinder to him. They kept him for some dozen years making sportvery good sport sometimes, if never of the very bestfor the Philistines at indifferent wages, and this practice served as the apprenticeship to immortal work in his proper spherework which, to do the public justice, was pretty readily recognised, and which he never had occasion thereafter to give up, either for lack of demand or for lack of reward. 4