l foothold in a world at
war with my heart: they helped to take away what the world calls
personal ambition. They strengthened my natural quality as a dreamer, my
tendency to care only for the welfare of the soul. If I could bring
about no change in this world, it should effect no alteration in me.
This, as I grew older, became a conscious passion with me: not to allow
myself to be affected by the world, or its ideals. Such was, at an early
age, my romantic resolution. Now, as the colour in my hair begins to
match the grey in my eyes, and I look back over the changes of almost
half a century, I detect in the wreck of my life almost a harmony, and
something rises above the ruins.

"On that frail foundation from fairy land my trembling imagination
rested, even amid the sordid developments of my experience. How often
did I take my youthful oath that the day should never come when I would
out-grow my feeling for all the world! I have been put to the test,
and, I hope, not found wanting.

"The end of my first ten years of life found me regretfully divesting
myself, one by one, of my beloved folk-lore tales, and reverently
folding them away, in preparation for the fray. I worked, during my
second ten years, as a journeyman tanner and currier; knocked by fate
and the boss from shop to shop and from town to town. I naturally sought
solidarity with my fellows. Class feeling awoke in me, and voluntarily
and enthusiastically I joined the union of my craft. Though I strained
at its narrow confines, I was at one with my class. During the '70's and
'80's the eight hour movement laid me off on several strikes, long and
short. This enforced leisure was not idleness for me, for in these
periods the world of science, art and philosophy shot their stray gleams
into my startled mind, and I found time to ponder on what leisure might
do for the mob. What did it not do for me, and what has it not done for
me since? And I in the very ecstasy of my being was one of this mob.

"Whole hours, whole nights, I stole from my needed rest to read and
ponder on our human fate. Sundays! Things after a day's labour
incomprehensible to my stunned brain were easily grasped on a glorious
morning of religious leisure. The apathy of my fellows--how well I
understood it when, with nerves unstrung and muscles relaxed, after a
tense twelve hours of toil, I fell asleep over my beloved books! And how
well, too, I understood their amusement--the appeal of the poor