32 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



began to go quickly down hill, and as we could not stop it, 

 and were afraid of being pulled into the water, we had to let 

 go, and the roller rushed on, splashed into the pond, and dis- 

 appeared. We were rather frightened, and were, of course, 

 lectured on the narrow escape we had had from drowning our- 

 selves. This is really all I recollect of my first experience of 

 a boarding-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 

 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 



