SCHOOL DAYS IN FRANCE 97 
ing to find that when, at the age of forty-five, he first 
seriously began to write for publication and in English, 
which was not his mother tongue, he found himself han- 
dicapped in many ways. In after life he wrote that the 
only school which he had ever attended was that of Ad- 
versity, and that his tuition there had been of a pro- 
longed and elaborate character. Though this statement 
was made under the stress of present feeling, it was 
not wholly devoid of truth. 
