hat he has never left the place. At the
present time his country house is on the slope overlooking Criccieth,
about a mile from the old cobbler's cottage where he spent his boyhood
forty years ago.

Lloyd George was sent quite early to the church elementary school with
the other village children. There seems to have been nothing of the
copy-book order about his behavior, nor are any moral lessons for the
young to be drawn from it. He set no specially good example, was not
particularly studious, was quite as mischievous if not more so than his
schoolmates, and on top of all this--sad to relate after such a
record--was practically always at the head of his class. He achieved
without effort what others sought to accomplish by hard and persistent
work. He just soaked up knowledge as a sponge soaks up water; he could
not help it. Out of school hours he was a daring youngster filled with
high spirits, and very active. He had dark-blue eyes, blackish hair, a
delicate skin, and regular features, and the audacity within him was
concealed behind a thoughtful, studious expression--just such a boy as
a mother worships. That old Puritan, his uncle, worshiped him, too,
though I am quite sure he concealed the fact behind the gravest and
sometimes the most reproving of demeanors. An interesting point is
that the vivacious and keen-witted child understood and was devoted to
this serious-minded uncle of his. Richard Lloyd worked hard to make
the boy grow up a straight-living, brave, and God-fearing man, and his
influence on his young nephew was strong from the start. There is a
story told about this. The children of the village school (which was
connected with the Established Church of England) on each Ash Wednesday
had to march from the school to the church, and were there made to give
the responses to the Church Catechism and to recite the Apostles'
Creed. That sturdy Nonconformist, Richard Lloyd, denied the right of
the Church of England to force children, many of them belonging to
Nonconformist parents, to go to church to subscribe to the Church
doctrine. Lloyd George carefully digested his uncle's protest, and
went away and organized a revolt among the children. The next time
they went to church they refused to make the responses. Lloyd George
as the ring-leader was punished, but the rebellion he organized stopped
the practice of forcing Church dogmas into the mouths of the children.
This is a very suggestive story.