AUTOBIOGRAPHY 7 



attend anatomical pursuits, but on this occasion my 

 curiosity overpowered all other feelings, and I spent two 

 or three hours in gratifying it. I did not cut myself 

 and none of the ordinary symptoms of dissection- 

 poison supervened, but poisoned I was somehow, and I 

 remember sinking into a strange state of apathy. By 

 way of a last chance, I was sent to the care of some 

 good, kind people, friends of my father's, who lived 

 in a farmhouse in the heart of Warwickshire. I re- 

 member staggering from my bed to the window on the 

 bright spring morning after my arrival, and throwing 

 open the casement. Life seemed to come back on the 

 wings of the breeze, and to this day the faint odor of 

 wood-smoke, like that which floated across the farm- 

 yard in the early morning, is as good to me as the 

 "sweet south upon a bed of violets." I soon recovered, 

 but for years I suffered from occasional paroxysms of 

 internal pain, and from that time my constant friend, 

 hypochondriacal dyspepsia, commenced his half century 

 of co-tenancy of my fleshly tabernacle. 



Looking back on my "Lehrjahre," 6 I am sorry to 

 say that I do not think that any account of my doings 

 as a student would tend to edification. In fact, I should 

 distinctly warn ingenuous youth to avoid imitating my 

 example. I worked extremely hard when it pleased me, 

 and when; it did not which was a very frequent 

 case I was extremely idle (unless making caricatures 

 of one's pastors and masters is to be called a branch of 

 industry), or else wasted my energies in wrong direc- 

 tions. I read everything I could lay hands upon, in- 

 cluding novels, and took up all sorts of pursuits to 

 drop them again quite as speedily. No doubt it was 

 very largely my own fault, but the only instruction 

 from which I ever obtained the proper effect of educa- 

 6 "Apprenticeship." 



