AUTOBIOGRAPHY 3 



more surely than worth, capacity, or honest work, 

 to the highest places in Church and State. But the op- 

 portunity was lost, and I have been obliged to content 

 myself through life with saying what I mean in the 

 plainest of plain language, 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 ; but it is a curious chance that my parents should 

 have fixed for my usual denomination upon the name 

 of that particular Apostle with whom I have always 

 felt most sympathy. Physically and mentally I am 

 the son of my mother so completely even down to 

 peculiar movements of the 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 

 tenacity of purpose which unfriendly observers some- 

 times 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 no more education than other women of 

 the middle classes in her day, she had an excellent 

 mental capacity. Her most distinguishing characteris- 

 tic, however, was rapidity of thought. If one ventured 

 to suggest she had not taken much time to arrive at any 

 conclusion, she would say, "I cannot help it, things 

 flash across me." That peculiarity 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 



