A RETURN TO NATURE 75 



newly built. I went to a middle-class school close by 

 until I was sixteen, and then I went into a silk merchant's 

 office. My father died soon after. He had never been 

 strong, and from the first year's work in the city, I have 

 heard my mother say, he was a doomed man. He made 

 no friends. While I was young he gave up all his spare 

 time to me and was happy, wheeling me, my mother 

 walking alongside, out into the country on every Sunday 

 that was not soaking wet, and nearly every Saturday 

 afternoon, too. 



" It was on one of these excursions, when they had 

 left me to myself a little while to talk more gravely than 

 they usually did when we were out like that, that there 

 was suddenly opened before me — like a yawning pit, 

 yet not only beneath me but on every side — infinity, end- 

 less time, endless space; it was thrust upon me, I could 

 not grasp it, I only closed my eyes and shuddered and 

 knew that not even my father could save me from it, 

 then in a minute it was gone. To a more blessed child 

 some fair or imposing vision might have risen up out of 

 the deep and given him a profounder if a sadder eye for 

 life and the world. How unlike it was to the mystic's 

 trance, feeling out with infinite soul to earth and stars 

 and sea and remote time and recognizing his oneness with 

 them. To me, but later than that, this occasionally 

 recurring experience was as an intimation of the endless 

 pale road, before and behind, which the soul has to travel : 

 it was a terror that enrolled me as one of the helpless, 

 superfluous ones of the earth. 



"I was their only child that lived, and my father's 

 joy in me was very great, equalled only by his misery at 



