I

MY VISITOR

There are some events of which each circumstance and surrounding detail
seems to be graven on the memory in such fashion that we cannot forget
it, and so it is with the scene that I am about to describe. It rises
as clearly before my mind at this moment as thought it had happened but
yesterday.

It was in this very month something over twenty years ago that I, Ludwig
Horace Holly, was sitting one night in my rooms at Cambridge, grinding
away at some mathematical work, I forget what. I was to go up for my
fellowship within a week, and was expected by my tutor and my college
generally to distinguish myself. At last, wearied out, I flung my book
down, and, going to the mantelpiece, took down a pipe and filled it.
There was a candle burning on the mantelpiece, and a long, narrow glass
at the back of it; and as I was in the act of lighting the pipe I caught
sight of my own countenance in the glass, and paused to reflect. The
lighted match burnt away till it scorched my fingers, forcing me to drop
it; but still I stood and stared at myself in the glass, and reflected.

"Well," I said aloud, at last, "it is to be hoped that I shall be able
to do something with the inside of my head, for I shall certainly never
do anything by the help of the outside."

This remark will doubtless strike anybody who reads it as being slightly
obscure, but I was in reality alluding to my physical deficiencies.