Autobiography 5 



lost, and I have been obliged to content myself through 

 life with saying what I mean in the plainest of plain lan- 

 guage, than which, I suppose, there is no habit more 

 ruinous to a man's prospects of advancement. 

 ^ Why I was christened Thomas Henry I do not know; 5 

 but it is a curious chance that my parents should have 

 fixed for my usual denomination upon the name of that par- 

 ticular Apostle with whom I have always felt most sym- 

 pathy. Physically and mentally I am the son of my mother 

 so completely even down to peculiar movements of the 10 

 hands, which made their appearance in me as I reached 

 the age she had when I noticed them that I can hardly 

 find any trace of my father in myself, except an inborn 

 faculty for drawing, which unfortunately, in my case, has 

 never been cultivated, a hot temper, and that amount of 15 

 tenacity of purpose which unfriendly observers sometimes 

 call obstinacy. 



My mother was a slender brunette, of an emotional 

 and energetic temperament, and possessed of the most 

 piercing black eyes I ever saw in a woman's head. With 20 

 no more education than other women of the middle classes 

 in her day, she had an excellent mental capacity. Her 

 most distinguishing characteristic, however, was rapidity 

 of thought. If one ventured to suggest she had not taken 

 much time to arrive at any conclusion, she would say: 25 

 " I cannot help it, things flash across me." That pecu- 

 liarity has been passed on to me in full strength; it has 

 often stood me in good stead ; it has sometimes played me 

 sad tricks, and it has always been a danger. But, after 

 all, if my time were to come over again, there is nothing 30 

 I would less willingly part with than my inheritance of 

 mother wit. 



I have next to nothing to say about my childhood. In 

 later years my mother, looking at me almost reproachfully, 



