the red brick buildings of my first
school and the chapel that adjoined it. The fields a little way off
were full of boys in white flannels playing cricket. On the asphalt
playing ground, just by the schoolroom windows, stood Agamemnon,
Achilles, and Odysseus, with their Argives armed behind them; but
Hector stepped down out of a ground-floor window, and in the
schoolroom were all Priam's sons and the Achaeans and fair Helen;
and a little farther away the Ten Thousand drifted across the
playground, going up into the heart of Persia to place Cyrus on his
brother's throne. And the boys that I knew called to me from the
fields, and said 'Goodbye,' and they and the fields went away; and
the Ten Thousand said 'Goodbye,' each file as they passed me
marching swiftly, and they too disappeared. And Hector and Agamemnon
said 'Goodbye,' and the host of the Argives and of the Achaeans; and
they all went away and the old school with them, and I was alone
again.

The next scene that filled the emptiness was rather dim: I was being
led by my nurse along a little footpath over a common in Surrey. She
was quite young. Close by a band of gypsies had lit their fire, near
them their romantic caravan stood unhorsed, and the horse cropped
grass beside it. It was evening, and the gypsies muttered round
their fire in a tongue unknown and strange. Then they all said in
English, 'Goodbye'. And the evening and the common and the
campfire went away. And instead of this a white highway with
darkness and stars below it that led into darkness and stars, but at
the near end of the road were common fields and gardens, and there I
stood close to a large number of people, men and women. And I saw a
man walking alone down the road away from me towards the darkness
and the stars, and all the people called him by his name, and the
man would not hear them, but walked on down the road, and the people
went on calling him by his name. But I became irritated with the man
because he would not stop or turn round when so many people called
him by his name, and it was a very strange name. And I became weary
of hearing the strange name so very often repeated, so that I made a
great effort to call him, that he might listen and that the people
might stop repeating this strange name. And with the effort I opened
my eyes wide, and the name that the people called was my own name,
and I lay on the river's bank with men and women bending over me,
and my hair