ust myself and fit
my problem, my temptations, my efforts, my patriotic instinct, all my
moral instincts, my physical appetites, my dreams and my sanity.

London! I came up to it, young and without advisers, rather
priggish, rather dangerously open-minded and very open-eyed, and with
something--it is, I think, the common gift of imaginative youth, and I
claim it unblushingly--fine in me, finer than the world and seeking fine
responses. I did not want simply to live or simply to live happily or
well; I wanted to serve and do and make--with some nobility. It was in
me. It is in half the youth of the world.

II

I had come to London as a scholar. I had taken the Vincent Bradley
scholarship of the Pharmaceutical Society, but I threw this up when I
found that my work of the Science and Art Department in mathematics,
physics and chemistry had given me one of the minor Technical Board
Scholarships at the Consolidated Technical Schools at South Kensington.
This latter was in mechanics and metallurgy; and I hesitated between the
two. The Vincent Bradley gave me L70 a year and quite the best start-off
a pharmaceutical chemist could have; the South Kensington thing was
worth about twenty-two shillings a week, and the prospects it opened
were vague. But it meant far more scientific work than the former, and I
was still under the impulse of that great intellectual appetite that is
part of the adolescence of men of my type. Moreover it seemed to lead
towards engineering, in which I imagined--I imagine to this day--my
particular use is to be found. I took its greater uncertainty as a fair
risk. I came up very keen, not doubting that the really hard and steady
industry that had carried me through Wimblehurst would go on still in
the new surroundings.

Only from the very first it didn't....

When I look back now at my Wimblehurst days, I still find myself
surprised at the amount of steady grinding study, of strenuous
self-discipline that I maintained throughout my apprenticeship. In many
ways I think that time was the most honourable period in my life. I wish
I could say with a certain mind that my motives in working so well were
large and honourable too. To a certain extent they were so; there was
a fine sincere curiosity, a desire for the strength and power of
scientific knowledge and a passion for intellectual exercise; but I
do not think those forces alone would have kept me at it so grimly
and closely if Wimblehurst had not b