hared
some little jokes, and who treated me as he might treat a younger
brother; he was pledged, I remember, to give me a cake if I won an Eton
Scholarship, and royally he redeemed his promise. He died of heart
disease a little while after I left the school. I had promised to write
to him from Eton and never did so, and I had a little pang about that
when I heard of his death. And then there was the handsome loud-voiced
maid of my dormitory, Underwood by name, who was always just and kind,
and who, even when she rated us, as she did at times, had always
something human beckoning from her handsome eye. I can see her now,
with her sleeves tucked up, and her big white muscular arms, washing a
refractory little boy who fought shy of soap and water. I had a wild
idea of giving her a kiss when I went away, and I think she would have
liked that. She told me I had always been a good boy, and that she was
sorry that I was going; but I did not dare to embrace her.

And then there was dear Louisa, the matron of the little sanatorium on
the Mortlake road. She had been a former housemaid of ours; she was a
strong sturdy woman, with a deep voice like a man, and when I arrived
there ill--I was often ill in those days--she used to hug and kiss me
and even cry over me; and the happiest days I spent at school were in
that poky little house, reading in Louisa's little parlour, while she
prepared some special dish as a treat for my supper; or sitting hour by
hour at the window of my room upstairs, watching a grocer opposite set
out his window. I certainly did love Louisa with all my heart; and it
was almost pleasant to be ill, to be welcomed by her and petted and
made much of. "My own dear boy," she used to say, and it was music in
my ears.

I feel on looking back that, if I had children of my own, I should
study very carefully to avoid any sort of terrorism. Psychologists tell
us that the nervous shocks of early years are the things that leave
indelible marks throughout life. I believe that mental specialists
often make a careful study of the dreams of those whose minds are
afflicted, because it is held that dreams very often continue to
reproduce in later life the mental shocks of childhood. Anger,
intemperate punishment, any attempt to produce instant submission and
dismay in children, is very apt to hurt the nervous organisation. Of
course it is easy enough to be careful about these things in sheltered
environments, where there is so