nto the
everlasting arms of that Infinite which are stretched out to receive
them and to give them rest and the keys of knowledge. When will man
learn what was taught to him of old, that faith is the only plank
wherewith he can float upon this sea and that his miserable works avail
him nothing; also that it is a plank made of many sorts of wood, perhaps
to suit our different weights?

So to be honest, in a sense I believe myself to be my father's superior,
and I know that he agreed with me. Perhaps this is owing to the blood
of my Scotch mother which mixed well with his own; perhaps because the
essential spirit given to me, though cast in his mould, was in fact
quite different--or of another alloy. Do we, I wonder, really understand
that there are millions and billions of these alloys, so many indeed
that Nature, or whatever is behind Nature, never uses the same twice
over? That is why no two human beings are or ever will be quite
identical. Their flesh, the body of their humiliation, is identical in
all, any chemist will prove it to you, but that which animates the
flesh is distinct and different because it comes from the home of that
infinite variety which is necessary to the ultimate evolution of the
good and bad that we symbolise as heaven and hell.

Further, I had and to a certain extent still have another advantage
over my father, which certainly came to me from my mother, who was, as
I judge from all descriptions and such likenesses as remain of her, an
extremely handsome woman. I was born much better looking. He was small
and dark, a little man with deep-set eyes and beetling brows. I am also
dark, but tall above the average, and well made. I do not know that I
need say more about my personal appearance, to me not a very attractive
subject, but the fact remains that they called me "handsome Humphrey"
at the University, and I was the captain of my college boat and won many
prizes at athletic sports when I had time to train for them.

Until I went up to Oxford my father educated me, partly because he knew
that he could do it better than anyone else, and partly to save school
expenses. The experiment was very successful, as my love of all outdoor
sports and of any small hazardous adventure that came to my hand, also
of associating with fisherfolk whom the dangers of the deep make men
among men, saved me from becoming a milksop. For the rest I learned more
from my father, whom I always desired to please because I