" was
in and out all the time. "Ma" was everything, the only woman who has
ever had my whole love, my whole trust and has made my heart ache with
the desire to show my love.

A later picture. The boy is bigger, and not so fat. He no longer has
a nurse. He has vacated the nursery, which is now tenanted by his big
sisters. He has a little room all his own: a very small room, looking
west. The south-west gales beat upon the window in the winter, and not
so far away is the roar of the sea. It is good to curl up in a nice
warm little bed, and listen to the howling of the wind and the waves.

In the morning come lessons from his eldest sister G. The schoolroom
has rings and a trapeze, a bookshelf full of boys' books, and
cupboards full of stone bricks, cannon and soldiers. The boy's mind
is set on bricks and soldiers. Lessons and walks with "Ma" and his
sisters or Ronnie and his nurse down the town are a nuisance. They
interfere with the building of cathedrals and the settling of the
destinies of nations by the arbitrament of war.

It was a stolid, placid boy, intensely wrapt up in his cathedrals and
his generals, intensely devoted to "Ma," and regarding all else as
rather a nuisance. Ronnie he liked. He liked going to tea with him,
and going walks with him and his nurse; but they didn't have much
in common except cricket. Ronnie had big soldiers which could not be
knocked down by cannon balls, and which couldn't make history because
they were few in number, and nearly all English. Mine were of every
European power, and many Asiatic ones. They were diminutive and
numerous, could take shelter in a forest of pine cones and were
admirably suited to be mown down at the cannon's mouth. The King of
England was a person with a fine figure. He had one leg and one arm,
and the plume of his dragoon's helmet was shorn off; but his slight,
erect figure still looked noble on a stately white palfrey. The French
armies were usually commanded by Marshal Petit, a gay fellow with
his full complement of limbs, who sat a horse well. He had a younger
brother almost equally distinguished. I have no recollection of a King
of France. He must have been a poor fellow. The Sultan of Turkey,
the Khedive, and Li Hung Chang still live in my memory as persons of
distinction; but I have no personal recollection of the Tsar, or the
Emperors of Germany or Austria, or of the King of Italy, though I know
they existed.

Into this placid existence turmoil wo