out, despite all the grumbling of this modern era. Nottingham,
where the family was then located, suffered heavily, a large
proportion of its poorer classes being reduced to the verge of
starvation. My father, who had invested the entire savings of his
lifetime in small house property, was seriously affected by these
calamitous circumstances; in fact, he was ruined.

"The brave way in which my mother stood by his side during that
dark and sorrowful season is indelibly written on my memory. She
shared his every anxiety, advised him in all his business
perplexities, and upheld his spirit as crash followed crash, and
one piece of property after another went overboard. Years of heavy
affliction followed, during which she was his tender, untiring
nurse, comforting and upholding his spirit unto death; and then she
stood out all alone to fight the battles of his children amidst the
wreck of his fortunes.

"Those days were gloomy indeed; and the wonder now in looking back
upon them is that she survived them. It would have seemed a
perfectly natural thing if she had died of a broken heart, and been
borne away to lie in my father's grave.

"But she had reasons for living. Her children bound her to earth,
and for our sakes she toiled on with unswerving devotion and
unintermitting care. After a time the waters found a smoother
channel, so far as this world's troubles were concerned, and her
days were ended, in her eighty-fifth year, in comparative peace."

"During one of my Motor Campaigns to Nottingham," The General wrote
on another occasion, "my car took me over the Trent, the dear old
river along whose banks I used to wander in my boyhood days,
sometimes poring over Young's _Night Thoughts_, reading Henry Kirke
White's _Poems_, or, as was frequently the case before my
conversion, with a fishing-rod in my hand.

"In those days angling was my favourite sport. I have sat down on
those banks many a summer morning at five o'clock, although I
rarely caught anything. An old uncle ironically used to have a
plate with a napkin on it ready for my catch waiting for me on my
return.

"And then the motor brought us to the ancient village of Wilford,
with its lovely old avenues of elms fringing the river.

"There were the very meadows in which we childre