with the last of his two or three sentences, "I don't destine him for a
Thibetan prayer-mill," (she had fondly intended me for the priesthood)
he sat down to a letter, the result of which was that I found myself in
a week at the Royal Grammar School at Montreal. Here, where the great
city appeared a wilderness of palaces and the large School an almost
universe of youthful Crichtons whose superiorities seemed to me the
greater because I knew little of their English tongue, the contrasts
with my rural Dormillière were so striking and continual that I was set
thinking by almost every occurrence.

A French boy is nothing if not imaginative. The time seemed to me a
momentous epoch big with the question: "What path shall I follow?"

I admired the prize boys who were so clever and famous. I took a prize
myself, and felt heaven in the clapping.

I admired those equally who were skilled at athletics. I saw a
tournament of sports and envied the sparkling cups and medals.

These,--to be a brilliant man of learning _and an athlete_--seemed to me
the two great careers of existence!

The first step, out of a number that were to come, towards a great
discovery, was thus unconsciously by me taken. What is greater than
Life? what discovery is more momentous than of its profound meaning?
Anything I am or may do is the outcome of this one discovery I later
made, which seems to me the very Secret of the World.

* * * * *