old enough to go to the Great Exhibition, and I have a faint memory of my
brother consolingly bringing me home one of those folding pictured strips
that are sold in the streets, on which were imaged glories that I longed
only the more to see. Far-away, dusky, trivial memories, these. What a
pity it is that a baby cannot notice, cannot observe, cannot remember,
and so throw light on the fashion of the dawning of the external world on
the human consciousness. If only we could remember how things looked when
they were first imaged on the retinae; what we felt when first we became
conscious of the outer world; what the feeling was as faces of father and
mother grew out of the surrounding chaos and became familiar things,
greeted with a smile, lost with a cry; if only memory would not become a
mist when in later years we strive to throw our glances backward into the
darkness of our infancy, what lessons we might learn to help our
stumbling psychology, how many questions might be solved whose answers we
are groping for in vain.



II.


The next scene that stands out clearly against the background of the past
is that of my father's death-bed. The events which led to his death I
know from my dear mother. He had never lost his fondness for the
profession for which he had been trained, and having many medical
friends, he would now and then accompany them on their hospital rounds,
or share with them the labors of the dissecting room. It chanced that
during the dissection of the body of a person who had died of rapid
consumption, my father cut his finger against the edge of the
breast-bone. The cut did not heal easily, and the finger became swollen