is a curious
chance that my parents should have fixed for my usual denomination upon
the name of that particular Apostle with whom I have always felt most
sympathy. Physically and mentally I am the son of my mother so
completely--even down to peculiar movements of the hands, which made
their appearance in me as I reached the age she had when I noticed
them--that I can hardly find any trace of my father in myself, except an
inborn faculty for drawing, which unfortunately, in my case, has never
been cultivated, a hot temper, and that amount of tenacity of purpose
which unfriendly observers sometimes call obstinacy.

My mother was a slender brunette, of an emotional and energetic
temperament, and possessed of the most piercing black eyes I ever saw in
a woman's head. With no more education than other women of the middle
classes in her day, she had an excellent mental capacity. Her most
distinguishing characteristic, however, was rapidity of thought. If one
ventured to suggest she had not taken much time to arrive at any
conclusion, she would say, "I cannot help it, things flash across me."
That peculiarity has been passed on to me in full strength; it has often
stood me in good stead; it has sometimes played me sad tricks, and it
has always been a danger. But, after all, if my time were to come over
again, there is nothing I would less willingly part with than my
inheritance of mother wit.

I have next to nothing to say about my childhood. In later years my
mother, looking at me almost reproachfully, would sometimes say, "Ah!
you were such a pretty boy!" whence I had no difficulty in concluding
that I had not fulfilled my early promise in the matter of looks. In
fact, I have a distinct recollection of certain curls of which I was
vain, and of a conviction that I closely resembled that handsome,
courtly gentleman, Sir Herbert Oakley, who was vicar of our parish, and
who was as a god to us country folk, because he was occasionally visited
by the then Prince George of Cambridge. I remember turning my pinafore
wrong side forwards in order to represent a surplice, and preaching to
my mother's maids in the kitchen as nearly as possible in Sir Herbert's
manner one Sunday morning when the rest of the family were at church.
That is the earliest indication I can call to mind of the strong
clerical affinities which my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer has always
ascribed to me, though I fancy they have for the most part remained in a
lat