ed me more in my childish hours than I could
ever count, a voice that was perhaps the one that had taught me to
speak correctly in those trying early days. She wasn't Mrs. Durham any
longer, she was Mrs. Gold, but she hadn't altered one bit, and she was
Mum then, as she has always been since.

"It wouldn't be honest to skip the next part of the story, and yet I
always want to omit this part somehow, because it is entirely composed
of events brought about by my own selfishness, obstinacy and
pig-headedness, although as a young man I never realised the great
grief and the real trouble I was causing to people who had always loved
me and done everything for me.

"It started after the time I had left the University of Oxford. I had
just commenced to feel my wings, so to speak. Everything there had
helped to increase and nourish my love of literature, the set I mixed
with had placed me on a sort of pedestal which I in no way deserved,
everybody seemed to expect a lot from me, every one seemed to believe I
would do great and wonderful things, and what was more disastrous
still, I believed I should do wonderful things myself. Imbued with
these beliefs, I went home after my last year at Oxford, determined to
be a great writer, mark you, not an ordinary writer, since I was
positively assured of the fact that I had only to make an appearance in
print to be instantly proclaimed one of the immortals. Whilst I was in
this ridiculous frame of mind, Dad unfolded to me the cherished scheme
of his life. It was that I should go into his office and learn the
business, and one day become the head of the firm.

"I think my blank face must have told them the utter hopelessness of
the scheme, even before I had explained to them all my hopes and
beliefs as to what I intended to be. One of the things I regret most
in my life was the grief I saw only too plainly upon the old Dad's
face. He had been brought up a business man all his life, he didn't
believe in Literature as a living. He never argued, he didn't storm,
hardly said anything, except begging me in an appealing sort of way to
reconsider my decision. But I saw at once that I had dealt a
death-blow to all his hopes, and, like the selfish young brute I was, I
didn't care so long as I got my own way.

"I must have been utterly mad at the time, or intoxicated with my own
belief in myself, for I even went further, and said I was going away
without any further help of any sort, an