y life it seems to me I saw this little boy as he was,
squat-bodied, big-headed, thick-lipped, and with a face swept
clean of all emotions save where his two great eyes glowed with
a sulky fire under exaggerated eyebrows. I noticed his grimy
nails, his soiled collar, his unbrushed clothes, the patent
signs of defeat changing to utter rout, and from the heights of
my great peace I was not sorry for him. He was like that, other
boys were different, that was all.

And then on a day fear returned to my heart, and my newly discovered
Utopia was no more. I do not know what chance word of the grown-up
people or what random thought of mine did the mischief; but of a
sudden I realised that for all my dreaming I was only separated by a
measurable number of days from the horror of school. Already I was
sick with fear, and in place of my dreams I distressed myself by
visualising the scenes of the life I dreaded--the Meat Market, the
dusty shadows of the gymnasium, the sombre reticence of the great
hall. All that my lost tranquillity had given me was a keener sense
of my own being; my smallness, my ugliness, my helplessness in the
face of the great cruel world. Before I had sometimes been able to
dull my emotions in unpleasant circumstances and thus achieve a
dogged calm; now I was horribly conscious of my physical sensations,
and, above all, of that deadly sinking in my stomach called fear. I
clenched my hands, telling myself that I was happy, and trying to
force my mind to pleasant thoughts; but though my head swam with the
effort, I continued to be conscious that I was afraid. In the midst
of my mental struggles I discovered that even if I succeeded in
thinking happy things I should still have to go back to school after
all, and the knowledge that thought could not avert calamity was
like a bruise on my mind. I pinched my arms and legs, with the idea
that immediate pain would make me forget my fears for the future;
but I was not brave enough to pinch them really hard, and I could
not forget the motive for my action. I lay back on the sofa and
kicked the cushions with my feet in a kind of forlorn anger. Thought
was no use, nothing was any use, and my stomach was sick, sick with
fear. And suddenly I became aware of an immense fatigue that
overwhelmed my mind and my body, and made me feel as helpless as a
little child. The tears that were always near my eyes streamed down
my face, making my cheek sore against the wet cushion, and m