bold lettering: "Cymru am byth!" ("Wales for
ever!") His instinctive love of Wales was strengthened by his visits
to Llanelly and by holidays on the Welsh countryside, where, amid
romantic surroundings and far from the fret and fever of modern life,
he obtained an insight into rural ways and things. Welsh love of music
and Welsh prowess in football also appealed powerfully to him.

Like most boys he went through the usual run of hobbies: silkworms,
carpentry, stamp-collecting, photography, parlour railways.
Thoroughness was his quality even in his hobbies. He had the
note-taking habit in marked degree. Even as a small boy on a long
railway journey he would carefully record in his notebook the name of
every station through which the train passed, and then, on reaching
his destination, would work out the distances by maps and books, and
finally draw an outline showing the route with the principal stations
and junctions marked. The same passion for classifying facts made him,
as soon as he began to follow cricket closely, compile tables showing
the batting and bowling averages of the leading players. Similarly
with football. He was familiar with the record of the leading Rugby
clubs and the characteristics of the principal players.

Machinery had for him the fascination of life in motion. He would gaze
with rapture at the rhythmic movement of a flywheel and was thrilled
by the harmonious movement of cogs and eccentrics, pistons and
connecting-rods, all "singing like the morning stars for joy that they
are made." As a child visiting a printing office he used to clap his
hands with delight at the sight of "the wheels all turning." For
engines of all sorts he had a passion. At Plymouth he loved to watch
the great G.W.R. locomotives steaming into Millbay terminus, and would
often engage the driver or stoker in conversation. After our removal
to London he spent part of one vacation in an engineering shop. When
he was fifteen we bought for him a small gas-engine which was fixed in
an upper room. Clad in overalls he spent many a happy hour with this
engine, generating electricity which he used sometimes for lighting,
sometimes for driving the engine and train on his miniature railway.
Here are extracts from one of his vacation diaries:

JANUARY, 1912

_January 1._--Went with Mother to first night of _Nightbirds_ at
the Lyric. Workman and Constance Driver excellent; Farkoa also
very good.

_January 2