the, founding of the Free Society and the _role_ which I played in it. I
wished to spare her as long as possible the sorrow of knowing of my going
astray; for I love this sister dearly, and am idolised by her in return.
For many long years the one passion of her life was her anxious solicitude
about me. We lived together, and she always treated me as a small boy whose
bringing up was her business. That I could exist more than at most two or
three days away from her protection, without becoming the victim of my
childish inexperience and of the wickedness of evil men, always seemed to
her an utter impossibility. Imagine, then, the unutterable terror of my
protectress when I was eventually compelled to disclose to her not only
that I was a member of a socialistic society, had not only devoted the
whole of my modest fortune to the objects of that society, but had actually
been selected as leader of 200 Socialists into the interior of Africa! It
was some days before she could grasp and believe the monstrous fact; then
followed entreaties, tears, desperate reproaches, and expostulations. I
might let the fellows have my money--over which, however, she felt that she
should have kept better guard--but, for heaven's sake, could I not stay
like an honest man at home? She consulted our family physician as to my
responsibility for my actions; but she came back worse than she went, for
he was one of our Society--indeed, a member of the expedition. At last,
when all else had failed, she announced that, if I persisted in rushing to
my ruin, she would accompany me. When I explained to her that this could
not be, as there were to be no women in the expedition, she brought her
heaviest artillery to bear upon me; she reminded me of our deceased mother,
who, on her deathbed, had commissioned my sister never to leave me--a
testamentary injunction to which I ought religiously to submit. As I still
remained obdurate, daring for the first time in my life to remark that our
good mother had plainly committed me to my sister's care only during the
period of my childhood, she fell into hopeless despondency, out of which
nothing could rouse her. In vain did I use endearing terms; in vain did I