Rambling--"bummelling," as the Germans term it--was my bent. This my
mother would have checked, but my father said:

"Don't molly-coddle him. Let him learn to be smart."

"I don't think the smart people are always the nicest," demurred my
mother. "I don't call you at all 'smart,' Luke."

My father appeared surprised, but reflected.

"I should call myself smart--in a sense," he explained, after
consideration.

"Perhaps you are right, dear," replied my mother; "and of course boys
are different from girls."

Sometimes I would wander Victoria Park way, which was then surrounded
by many small cottages in leafy gardens; or even reach as far as
Clapton, where old red brick Georgian houses still stood behind high
palings, and tall elms gave to the wide road on sunny afternoons an
old-world air of peace. But such excursions were the exception, for
strange though it may read, the narrow, squalid streets had greater
hold on me. Not the few main thoroughfares, filled ever with a dull,
deep throbbing as of some tireless iron machine; where the endless
human files, streaming ever up and down, crossing and recrossing,
seemed mere rushing chains of flesh and blood, working upon unseen
wheels; but the dim, weary, lifeless streets--the dark, tortuous
roots, as I fancied them, of that grim forest of entangled brick.
Mystery lurked in their gloom. Fear whispered from behind their
silence. Dumb figures flitted swiftly to and fro, never pausing,