This edition published 1984
by Methuen London Ltd
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Copyright (c) Alec Waugh 1917
ISBN 0 413 54970 4 (hardback)
ISBN 0 413 54980 1 (paperback)

Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd
Bungay, Suffolk

This book is available in both a hardcover and paperback edition. The
paperback is solid subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated
without the Publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected in text. There is
one place where a subscript is used and is designated by an underscore
and curly brackets thus: H_{2}O.

* * * * *

_Dedicatory Letter to Arthur Waugh_

My Dear Father,

This book, which I am bringing you, is a very small return for all you
have given me. In every mood, in every phase of my shifting pilgrimage,
I have found you ever the same--loving, sympathetic, wise. You have been
with me in my success, and in my happiness, in my failures and in my
disappointments, in the hours when I have followed wandering fires.
There has never yet come to me a moment when I did not know that I had
but to stretch out my hand to find you at my side. In return for so
much, this first book of mine is a very small offering.

But yet I bring it to you, simply because it is my first. For whatever
altars I may have raised by the wayside, whatever ephemeral loyalties
may have swayed me, my one real lodestar has always been your love, and
sympathy, and guidance. And as in life it has always been to you first
that I have brought my troubles, my aims, my hopes, so in the world of
ideas it is to you that I would bring this, the first-born of my dreams.

Accept it. For it carries with it the very real and very deep love of a
most grateful son.

A.W.

CONTENTS

Preface _page_ 9

BOOK I: WARP AND WOOF

I Groping 15

II Finding his Feet 21

III The New Philosophy 31

IV New Faces 44

V Emerging 52

VI Clarke 62

VII When One is i