e, and our race, as a single family,
having many branching offshoots. I do not mean that Cynthia supplied
facts or theories hitherto unknown to me. But I do mean that her
woman's mind first made me feel these things, intimately and
personally, as people feel the joys and sorrows of members of their
own households.

As a result I looked now with changed eyes upon many things. Before, I
had loathed and detested the slums of London, and the vicious, ugly
squalor of the lives of many of their inhabitants; hated them with the
bitterness of one who has been made to feel their poison in his own
veins. There had been far more of loathing than of pity or sorrow in
my attitude toward the canker at London's heart. Gradually, now,
because of the insight I had had into Cynthia's love of England, my
view became more kindly. I looked upon the canker less with hatred,
and more with the feeling one might have regarding some horrible and
malignant disease in a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister. And,
too, with more of a sense of responsibility and of shame.

So, from a lofty and quite ignorant scorn of things so essentially
mundane, I grew to take an understanding interest in current politics,
and more particularly in their wider aspects, as touching not England
alone but all British lands and people. I obtained a press pass from
Arncliffe, and attended an important debate in the House of Commons,
subsequently recording my impressions, in the form of an article by an
Outsider, from Australia. Journalistically, that article was a rather
striking success; and I began to attend the House frequently, and to
write more or less regular political impressions for the _Advocate_.

For several years my interest in these matters continued to be
progressive. (Three volumes of a political or quasi-political and
sociological character have appeared under my name.) I am grateful for
that interest, because it gave me some additional hold upon life, at a
time when such anchorage as I had had seemed to have been wrested from
me.

There was a quite considerable period--five or six years, at least, I
think--during which political work tended to broaden my mind, widen my
sympathies, and enhance my esteem for a number of my contemporaries.
Beyond that point I am afraid no good came to me from the study of
politics; from which fact it is probably safe to assume that any
influence I exercised ceased to be beneficial. For a time it had, I
think, been