everything within his own narrow world had to bow down in helpless
submission. In the end this one undoubtedly became the most significant
of all his early realizations. It tended gradually to lessen his awe of
parental authority so that, at a very early age, he developed the
courage to shape his own life and opinions regardless of his immediate
surroundings. At the same time, strange as it may seem, it inspired him
with a general respect for established authority from which he could
never quite free himself.



II

"Why don't I remember when we came here," Keith asked his mother one day
after she had let out the startling fact of his being born elsewhere.

"Because it happened before you began to remember things," she said a
little warily.

As frequently was the case, her reply puzzled him more than the fact it
was meant to explain, and so he asked no more questions that time.

On the whole, he lived completely in the present, and rather on the edge
nearest the future, so that a teacher later said of him that he was in
constant danger of "falling off forward." Highstrung and restless,
sitting still did not come naturally until he had learned to read books
all by himself, and he could hardly be called introspective. While prone
to futile regrets, largely under the influence of his mother's morbid
attitude, he gave little attention as a rule to what was past and gone.