confirm his story. He may have done so while I was too young to know
anything about it. But when people have made up their minds, they are
impatient of further evidence; my mother, moreover, was of a very
retiring disposition. The Italians say:-

"Chi lontano va ammogliare
Sara ingannato, o vorra ingannare."

"If a man goes far afield for a wife, he will be deceived--or means
deceiving." The proverb is as true for women as for men, and my mother
was never quite happy in her new surroundings. Wilfully deceived she
assuredly was not, but she could not accustom herself to English modes of
thought; indeed she never even nearly mastered our language; my father
always talked with her in Erewhonian, and so did I, for as a child she
had taught me to do so, and I was as fluent with her language as with my
father's. In this respect she often told me I could pass myself off
anywhere in Erewhon as a native; I shared also her personal appearance,
for though not wholly unlike my father, I had taken more closely after my
mother. In mind, if I may venture to say so, I believe I was more like
my father.

I may as well here inform the reader that I was born at the end of
September 1871, and was christened John, after my grandfather. From what
I have said above he will readily believe that my earliest experiences
were somewhat squalid. Memories of childhood rush vividly upon me when I
pass through a low London alley, and catch the faint sickly smell that
pervades it--half paraffin, half black-currants, but wholly something
very different. I have a fancy that we lived in Blackmoor Street, off
Drury Lane. My father, when first I knew of his doing anything at all,
supported my mother and myself by drawing pictures with coloured chalks