wonder still, what it was all for. Reading, almost my only art, I learnt
from Aunt Charlotte; a certain facility in drawing I acquired at home
and took to school, to my own undoing. "Undoing," again, is
deliberate--it was no mere swish on the hand, gentle reader. But the
things I learnt, more or less partially, at school, lie in my mind, like
the "Sarsen" stones of Wiltshire--great, disconnected, time-worn chunks
amidst the natural herbage of it. "The Rivers of the East Coast; the
Tweed, the Tyne, the Wear, the Tees, the Humber"--why is that, for
instance, sticking up among my ferns and wild flowers? It is not only
useless but misleading, for the Humber is not another Tweed. I sometimes
fancy the world may be mad--yet that seems egotistical. The fact remains
that for the greater part of my young life Mr. Sandsome got an appetite
upon us from nine till twelve, and digested his dinner, at first
placidly and then with petulance, from two until five--and we thirty odd
boys were sent by our twenty odd parents to act as a sort of chorus to
his physiology. And he was fed (as I judge) more than sufficiently,
clothed, sheltered, and esteemed on account of this relation. I think,
after all, there must have been something in that schooling. I can't
believe the world mad. And I have forgotten it--or as good as forgotten
it--all! At times I feel a wild impulse to hunt up all those
chintz-covered books, and brush up my dates and paradigms, before it is
too late.




THE POET AND THE EMPORIUM


"I am beginning life," he said, with a sigh. "Great Heavens! I have