why I was brought to a new home. Up to this point I have borrowed the
recollections of my parents, to piece out my own fragmentary
reminiscences. But from now on I propose to be my own pilot across the
seas of memory; and if I lose myself in the mists of uncertainty, or
run aground on the reefs of speculation, I still hope to make port at
last, and I shall look for welcoming faces on the shore. For the ship
I sail in is history, and facts will kindle my beacon fires.

CHAPTER V

I REMEMBER

My father and mother could tell me much more that I have forgotten, or
that I never was aware of; but I want to reconstruct my childhood from
those broken recollections only which, recurring to me in after years,
filled me with the pain and wonder of remembrance. I want to string
together those glimpses of my earliest days that dangle in my mind,
like little lanterns in the crooked alleys of the past, and show me an
elusive little figure that is myself, and yet so much a stranger to
me, that I often ask, Can this be I?

I have not much faith in the reality of my first recollection, but as
I can never go back over the past without bringing up at last at this
sombre little scene, as at a door beyond which I cannot pass, I must
put it down for what it is worth in the scheme of my memories. I see,
then, an empty, darkened room. In the middle, on the floor, lies a
long Shape, covered with some black stuff. There are candles at the
head of the Shape. Dim figures are seated low, against the walls,
swaying to and fro. No sound is in the room, except a moan or a sigh
from the shadowy figures; but a child is walking softly around and
around the Shape on the floor, in quiet curiosity.

The Shape is the body of my grandfather laid out for burial. The child
is myself--myself asking questions of Death.

I was four years old when my mother's father died. Do I really
remember the little scene? Perhaps I heard it described by some fond
relative, as I heard other anecdotes of my infancy, and unconsciously
incorporated it with my genuine recollections. It is so suitable a
scene for a beginning: the darkness, the mystery, the impenetrability.
My share in it, too, is characteristic enough, if I really studied
that Shape by the lighted candles, as I have always pretended to
myself. So often afterwards I find myself forgetting the conventional
meanings of things, in some search for a meaning of my own. It is more
likely, however, that I took