nerally upon the physical difficulty of keeping
my eyes open. I invariably fell asleep three or four times before
finishing my allotted task, and only managed to keep awake for the
reading of it by standing erect beside the packing-case and reading
aloud. How it would have astonished those gifted leader-writers if
they could have walked past, overheard me, and recognised in my
halting, drowsy declamation their own well-rounded periods!

As I read the last word my spirits always rose instantly, and my
craving for sleep left me. With keen anticipatory pleasure I would
fold up the newspaper ready for the morning, take one look out from
the doorway to note the weather, shed my clothes, snuff the candle,
and climb luxuriously into bed with the current book, whatever it
might be. No newspaper for me. This was real reading, and while I read
in bed (travel, biography, and fiction) I lived exclusively in the
life my author depicted. Vanished utterly for me were Dursley and its
worthy folk, and Australia too for that matter. Practically all the
books I read carried me to the Old World, and most often to England,
which for me was rapidly becoming a synonym for romance, charm,
interest, culture, and all the good things of which one dreams.
Everything desirable, and not noticeable or recognised as being in my
daily life, I grew gradually to think of as being part and parcel of
English life. I did not as yet long to go to England. One does not
long to visit the moon. But when some well-wrought piece of
atmosphere, some happy turn of speech, some inspiring glimpse of high
and noble motives or tender devotion, caught and held me, in a book, I
would sigh quietly and say to myself:

'Ah, yes; in England!'

Looking back upon it, I am rather pleased with myself for the stubborn
persistence with which I slogged away at the shorthand; because it
never once touched my interest. For me, it was a veritable treadmill.
And, for that reason, I suppose, I was never really good at it. I have
no doubt whatever that it had real value for me as a disciplinary
exercise.

And then my candle would gutter and expire. I have sometimes, by means
of sitting up in bed, holding the book high, and using great
concentration, devoured a whole chapter between the first sputtering
sound of the candle's death-rattle and the moment of its actual
demise. Indeed, I have more than once finished a chapter, when within
half a page of it, by matchlight. But that, of co