CHAPTER II 



usk: my earliest memories 



My earliest recollections are of myself as a little boy in short 

 frocks and with bare arms and legs, playing with my brother 

 and sisters, or sitting in my mother's lap or on a footstool 

 listening to stories, of which some fairy-tales, especially 

 " Jack the Giant-Killer," " Little Red Riding Hood," and 

 " Jack and the Beanstalk," seem to live in my memory ; and of 

 a more realistic kind, " Sandford and Merton," which perhaps 

 impressed me even more deeply than any. I clearly remem- 

 ber the little house and the room we chiefly occupied, with a 

 French window opening to the garden, a steep wooded bank 

 on the right, the road, river, and distant low hills to the left. 

 The house itself was built close under this bank, which 

 was quite rocky in places, and a little back yard between the 

 kitchen and a steep bit of rock has always been clearly 

 pictured before me as being the scene of my earliest attempt 

 to try an experiment, and its complete failure. " yEsop's 

 Fables " were often read to me, and that of the fox which was 

 thirsty and found a pitcher with a little water in the bottom but 

 with the opening too small for its mouth to reach it, and of the 

 way in which it made the water rise to the top by dropping 

 pebbles into it, puzzled me greatly. It seemed quite like magic. 

 So one day, finding a jar or bucket standing in the yard, I de- 

 termined to try and see this wonderful thing. I first with a 

 mug poured some water in till it was about an inch or two deep, 

 and then collected all the small stones I could find and put into 

 the water, but I could not see that the water rose up as I 

 thought it ought to have done. Then I got my little spade and 

 scraped up stones off the gravel path, and with it, of course, 



