accustomed to ordinary physical hard living, into which the initiation
began with his series of almost wholly sleepless nights and heavy
sleep-burdened days. Night was too strange--in barns, beneath hay-ricks,
in little oppressive rooms, in stable-lofts--for him to sleep easily at
first; and between his tramps, or in the dinner-hour, when he managed to
get work, he would drop off in the hot sunshine down into depths of
that kind of rest that is like the sea itself--glimmering gulfs, lit by
glimpses of consciousness of the grass beneath his cheek, the bubble of
bird-song in the copses, stretching down into profound and utter
darkness.

Of how the little happenings of every day wore themselves into a
coherent whole, and modified, not indeed himself, but his manner of life
and his experience and knowledge, I can make no real picture at all. The
first of these took place within ten miles of Cambridge on his first
morning, and resulted in the bruised face which Mr. Harris noticed; it
concerned a piece of brutality to a dog in which Frank interfered....
(He was extraordinarily tender to animals.) Then there was the learning
as to how work was obtained, and, even more considerable, the doing of
the work. The amateur, as Frank pointed out later, began too vigorously
and became exhausted; the professional set out with the same
deliberation with which he ended. One must not run at one's spade, or
hoe, or whatever it was; one must exercise a wearisome self-control ...
survey the work to be done, turn slowly, spit on one's hands, and after
a pause begin, remembering that the same activity must show itself, if
the work was to be renewed next day, up to the moment of leaving off.

Then there was the need of becoming accustomed to an entirely different
kind of food, eaten in an entirely different way, and under entirely
different circumstances. There was experience to be gained as to washing
clothes--I can almost see Frank now by a certain kind of stream,
stripped to the waist, waiting while his shirt dried, smoking an
ill-rolled cigarette, yet alert for the gamekeeper. Above all, there was
an immense volume of learning--or, rather, a training of instinct--to be
gained respecting human nature: a knowledge of the kind of man who would
give work, the kind of man who meant what he said, and the kind of man
who did not; the kind of woman who would threaten the police if milk or
bread were asked for--Frank learned to beg very quickly--the