32 MY LIFE 



roller rushed on, splashed into the pond, and disappeared. 

 We were rather frightened, and were, of course, lectured on 

 the narrow escape we had had from drowning ourselves. 

 This is really all I recollect of my first experience of a board- 

 ing-school. 



My next recollections are of the town of Hertford, where 

 we lived for eight or nine years, and where I had the whole 

 of my school education. We had a small house, the first of 

 a row of four at the beginning of St. Andrew's Street, and I 

 must have been a little more than six years old when I first 

 remember myself in this house, which had a very narrow yard 

 at the back, and a dwarf wall, perhaps five feet high, between 

 us and the adjoining house. The very first incident which I 

 remember, which happened, I think, on the morning after my 

 arrival, was of a boy about my own age looking over this 

 wall, who at once inquired, " Hullo ! who are you ? " I told 

 him that I had just come, and what my name was, and we at 

 once made friends. The stand of a water-butt enabled me to 

 get up and sit upon the wall, and by means of some similar 

 convenience he could do the same, and we were thus able to 

 sit side by side and talk, or get over the wall and play together 

 when we liked. Thus began the friendship of George Silk 

 and Alfred Wallace, which, with long intervals of absence 

 at various periods, has continued to this day. 



The way in which we were brought together throughout 

 our boyhood is very curious. While at Hertford I lived 

 altogether in five different houses, and in three of these the 

 Silk family lived next door to us, which involved not only 

 each family having to move about the same time, but also 

 that two houses adjoining each other should on each occasion 

 have been vacant together, and that they should have been 

 of the size required by each, which after the first was not the 

 same, the Silk family being much the largest. When we 

 moved to our second house, George's grandmother had an 

 old house opposite to us, and we were thus again brought 

 together. Besides this, for the greater part of the time we 

 were schoolfellows at the Hertford Grammar School; and it 



