evidence,
instead of starting all over afresh and only believing what one could
prove. But I was always ready to deny or turn into a joke what was for all
that my secret fanaticism. When I had read Darwin and Huxley and believed
as they did, I had wanted, because an established authority was upon my
side, to argue with everybody.

XXII

I no longer went to the Harcourt Street school and we had moved from Howth
to Rathgar. I was at the Arts schools in Kildare Street, but my father,
who came to the school now and then, was my teacher. The masters left me
alone, for they liked a very smooth surface and a very neat outline, and
indeed understood nothing but neatness and smoothness. A drawing of the
Discobolus, after my father had touched it, making the shoulder stand out
with swift and broken lines, had no meaning for them; and for the most
part I exaggerated all that my father did. Sometimes indeed, out of
rivalry to some student near, I too would try to be smooth and neat. One
day I helped the student next me, who certainly had no artistic gifts, to
make a drawing of some plaster fruit. In his gratitude he told me his
history. "I don't care for art," he said. "I am a good billiard player,
one of the best in Dublin; but my guardian said I must take a profession,
so I asked my friends to tell me where I would not have to pass an
examination, and here I am." It may be that I myself was there for no
better reason. My father had wanted me to go to Trinity College and, when
I would not, had said, "my father and grandfather and great-grandfather
have been there." I did not tell him my reason was that I did not believe
my classics or my mathematics good enough for any examination.

I had for fellow-student an unhappy "village genius" sent to Dublin by
some charitable Connaught landlord. He painted religious pictures upon
sheets nailed to the wall of his bedroom, a "Last Judgment" among the
rest. Then there was a wild young man who would come to school of a
morning with a daisy-chain hung round his neck; and George Russel, "AE,"
the poet, and mystic. He did not paint the model as we tried to, for some
other image rose always before his eyes (a St. John in the Desert I
remember,) and already he spoke to us of his visions. His conversation, so
lucid and vehement to-day, was all but incomprehensible, though now and
again some phrase would be understood and repeated. One day he announced
that he was leaving the Art schools becaus