o this kind of intellectual fireworks. These
attempts of mine to establish my superiority by revilement might have
occasioned me amusement to-day, had not their want of straightness and
common courtesy been too painful.

From my earliest years I had had practically no commerce with the
outside world. To be plunged in this state, at the age of 17, into the
midst of the social sea of England would have justified considerable
misgiving as to my being able to keep afloat. But as my sister-in-law
happened to be in Brighton with her children I weathered the first shock
of it under her shelter.

Winter was then approaching. One evening as we were chatting round the
fireside, the children came running to us with the exciting news that it
had been snowing. We at once went out. It was bitingly cold, the sky
filled with white moonlight, the earth covered with white snow. It was
not the face of Nature familiar to me, but something quite
different--like a dream. Everything near seemed to have receded far
away, leaving the still white figure of an ascetic steeped in deep
meditation. The sudden revelation, on the mere stepping outside a door,
of such wonderful, such immense beauty had never before come upon me.

My days passed merrily under the affectionate care of my sister-in-law
and in boisterous rompings with the children. They were greatly tickled
at my curious English pronunciation, and though in the rest of their
games I could whole-heartedly join, this I failed to see the fun of. How
could I explain to them that there was no logical means of
distinguishing between the sound of _a_ in warm and _o_ in worm.
Unlucky that I was, I had to bear the brunt of the ridicule which was
more properly the due of the vagaries of English spelling.

I became quite an adept in inventing new ways of keeping the children
occupied and amused. This art has stood me in good stead many a time
thereafter, and its usefulness for me is not yet over. But I no longer
feel in myself the same unbounded profusion of ready contrivance. That
was the first opportunity I had for giving my heart to children, and it
had all the freshness and overflowing exuberance of such a first gift.

But I had not set out on this journey to exchange a home beyond the seas
for the one on this side. The idea was that I should study Law and come
back a barrister. So one day I was put into a public school in Brighton.
The first thing the Headmaster said after scanning my featur