experiences after he obtained what was, in fact, a scholarship at the
Normal School of Science, South Kensington; but we drop that hero
again before his premature marriage and failure, to follow the
uncharted course of Wells obtaining his B.Sc. with first-class
honours; passing to an assistant-mastership at the Henley House
School, St John's Wood, and so coming by way of tutor, lecturer and
demonstrator to the beginnings of journalism, to the breaking of a
blood-vessel and thence, without further diversion, to the trade of
letters, somewhere in the summer of 1893.

I lave taken as my text the normality of Mr Wells, on the
understanding that I shall define the essential term as I will; and
this brief outline of his early experiences may help to show, _inter
alia_, that he viewed life from many angles before he was
twenty-seven. That he had the capacity so to see life was either a
lucky accident or due to some untraceable composition of heredity.
That he kept his power was an effect of his casual education. He was
fortunate enough to escape training in his observation of the sphere.

Persistent repetition will finally influence the young mind, however
gifted, and if Mr Wells had been subject to the discipline of what may
be called an efficient education, he might have seen his sphere at the
age of twenty-seven as slightly flattened--whether it appeared oblate
or prolate is no consequence--and I could not have crowned him with
the designation that heads this Introduction.

He is, in fact, normal just in so far as his gift of vision was
undistorted by the precepts and dogmas of his parents, teachers and
early companions.