d they any notion
of accepting any role which involved the bearing of responsibilities,
the discharge of civic and national duties.

Mr. Wheeler's aim in life was to make money and to enjoy himself. He
would never have exercised his right to vote if voting had involved
postponing dinner. He liked to talk of the British Empire, but he did
not even know precisely of what countries it consisted, and I think he
would cheerfully have handed Canada to France, Australia to Germany,
India to Russia, and South Africa to the Boers, if by so doing he could
have escaped the paying of income-tax.

On Sunday night, my last night at Weybridge, I walked home from church
alone with Sylvia. Marjory was in bed with a sore throat, and whatever
their notions as to my undesirability, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wheeler were
inclined to attend evening service. Leslie was not home from golf at
Byfleet. We were late for dinner, Sylvia and I, and during our walk she
promised to write to me regularly, and I promised many things, and
suggested many things, and was only deterred from actual declaration by
the thought of the poor little sum which stood between me and actual
want.

Next morning I went up to town with Leslie and his father to open my
campaign in London. As a first step toward procuring work, I was to
present a letter of introduction from a Cambridge friend to the editor
of the _Daily Gazette_. After that, as Leslie said, I was to "reform
England inside out."

IV

THE LAUNCHING

"O Friend! I know not which way I must look
For comfort, being, as I am, opprest
To think that now our life is only drest
For show; mean handi-work of craftsman, cook,
Or groom!--We must run glittering like a brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest;
The wealthiest man among us is the best;
No grandeur now in Nature or in book
Delight us...."

WORDSWORTH.

Looking back now upon that lonely launch of mine in London, I see a very
curious and sombre picture. In the living I am sure there must have been
mitigations, and light as well as shade. In the retrospect it seems one
long disillusion. I see myself, and the few folk with whom my relations
were intimate, struggling like ants across a grimy stage, in the midst
of an inferno of noise, confusion, pointless turmoil, squalor, and
ultimate cataclysm. The whole picture is lurid, superhuman in its
chaotic gloom; but i