Explore "All That Swagger" by Miles Franklin on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The hegira to Europe furnishes experiences so removed from those open to the home-staying Australian that Brian was able for a time to harvest his blunders without exposure to his native runs. Achievements conspicuous in Bandalong and Yass, and which lent him brief distinction at Sydney University, attracted no notice at Oxford. There he was merely one of the colonial students, who were of all persuasions, complexions and nationalities.
The national heritage, the man-made beauty of centuries of ancient glamour and still-living tradition had at first intoxicated him, and had involved the metaphysical experience of fusing his dream of old places with their actuality. Greedily he had tried to swallow all of life. First came the acquiring of knowledge in accordance with the curricula, then the stimulation of his thinking powers by association with mental equals and superiors in the movements having political platforms and affiliations. A diplomatic tolerance grown wily and mellow in the handling of resurgence and insurgence--any intransigence from colonists--ignored much, but twice Brian narrowly escaped being sent down for activities with subversionists.