exile sought to do, from the things I have learnt andfelt during

the career that has ended now in my divorce.

I climbed high and fast from small beginnings. I had themind of my

party. I do notknow where I might not have ended, but for this red

blaze that came out of my unguarded nature and closed my career for

ever.

CHAPTER THE SECOND

BROMSTEAD AND MY FATHER

1

Idreamt first ofstates and cities and political things when I was

a little boy in knickerbockers.

When Ithink of how such things began in mymind, there comes back

to me thememory of an enormous bleak room with its ceiling going up

to heaven and its floor covered irregularly with patched and

defective oilcloth and a dingy mat or so and a "surround" as they

call it, of dark stained wood. Here and there against the wall are

trunks and boxes. There are cupboards on either side of the

fireplace and bookshelves with books above them, and on the wall and

rather tattered is a large yellow-varnished geological map of the

South of England. Over the mantel is a huge lump of white coral

rock and several big fossil bones, and above that hangs the portrait

of a brainy gentleman, sliced in half and displaying an interior of

intricate detail and much vigour of coloring. It is the floor I

think of chiefly; over the oilcloth of which, assumed to be land,

spread towns and villages and forts of wooden bricks; there are

steep square hills (geologically, volumes of Orr's CYCLOPAEDIA OF

THE SCIENCES) and the cracks and spaces of the floor and the bare

brown surround were the water channels and open sea of that

continent of mine.

I stillremember with infinite gratitude the great-uncle to whom I

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