knowledge
of the principles of the universe, he lives in a state of ceaseless
activity, admitting no limitations, impatient of all restrictions.
What he wants, he wants very badly indeed. This wanting things was the
corner-stone of my character, and I believe that the science of the
future will bear me out when I say that it might have been differently
built upon. Certain it is that the system of education in vogue in the
70's and 80's never contemplated the search for natural corner-stones.

At all events, when I look back upon the boy I was, I see the beginnings
of a real person who fades little by little as manhood arrives and
advances, until suddenly I am aware that a stranger has taken his
place....

I lived in a city which is now some twelve hours distant from the
Atlantic seaboard. A very different city, too, it was in youth, in my
grandfather's day and my father's, even in my own boyhood, from what it
has since become in this most material of ages.

There is a book of my photographs, preserved by my mother, which I
have been looking over lately. First is presented a plump child of two,
gazing in smiling trustfulness upon a world of sunshine; later on a
lean boy in plaided kilts, whose wavy, chestnut-brown hair has been
most carefully parted on the side by Norah, his nurse. The face is
still childish. Then appears a youth of fourteen or thereabout in long
trousers and the queerest of short jackets, standing beside a marble
table against a classic background; he is smiling still in undiminished
hope and trust, despite increasing vexations and crossings, meaningless
lessons which had to be learned, disciplines to rack an aspiring soul,
and long, uncomfortable hours in the stiff pew of the First Presbyterian
Church. Associated with this torture is a peculiar Sunday smell and the
faint rustling of silk dresses. I can see the stern black figure of Dr.
Pound, who made interminable statements to the Lord.

"Oh, Lord," I can hear him say, "thou knowest..."

These pictures, though yellowed and faded, suggest vividly the being
I once was, the feelings that possessed and animated me, love for my
playmates, vague impulses struggling for expression in a world forever
thwarting them. I recall, too, innocent dreams of a future unidentified,
dreams from which I emerged vibrating with an energy that was lost for
lack of a definite objective: yet it was constantly being renewed. I
often wonder what I might have become if it c