lf.

In the young man of the leisured classes this sense only awakens late in
life. He is educated to consider only himself, to regard himself as, in
the Broadway phrase, a serious proposition; and some time must pass
before he discovers, with a pained surprise, that there are other people
in the world, and that his little life matters not at all in the eternal
scheme. Then, one day, something happens. He falls in love, perhaps;
and under the shock of the blow he discovers that he wants
something--something he has not known before, something he cannot name:
God, Beauty, Prayer, call it what you will. He discovers a thousand
subtle essences of life which his clumsy taste had hitherto passed. He
discovers that there is a life of ideas, that principles and ideals are
something more than mere fooling for dry-minded people, that thoughts
are as important as things. In a word, he has heard the Call of Beauty.
Just as a man may live in the same house with a girl for years, and then
one day will discover that she is beautiful, that she is adorable, that
he cannot lose her from his life, so we live surrounded by unregarded
beauty, until we awake. So for seven years I was surrounded by the glory
of London before I knew that I loved her....

When I was a small child I was as other children of our set. I played
their games in the street. I talked their language. I shared their
ambitions. I worshipped their gods. Life was a business of Board
School, breakfast, dinner, tea, struggled for and eaten casually, either
at the table or at the door or other convenient spot. I should grow up.
I should be, I hoped, a City clerk. I should wear stand-up collars. I
might have a moustache. For Sunday I might have a frock-coat and silk
hat, and, if I were very clever and got on well, a white waistcoat. I
should have a house--six rooms and a garden, and I might be able to go
to West End theatres sometimes, and sit in the pit instead of the
gallery. And some day I might even ride in a hansom-cab, though I should
have to succeed wonderfully to do that. I hoped I should succeed
wonderfully, because then the other boys at the Board School would look
up to me.

Thus I lived for ten years. A primrose by the river's brim was no more
to me than to Peter Bell, or, since I had never seen a primrose growing,
shall I say that the fried-fish shop at the corner of the High Street
was but a fried-fish shop, visited once a week rapturously. But after
the awak