Wales, at Twickenham. Score--England, 8 points;
Wales, _nil_. A splendid game. Wales beaten chiefly owing to
their very poor three-quarters. Little to choose between the
packs.

_January 31._--Having re-started music with a good teacher, a
pupil of Professor Hambourg, I have practised very hard on the
piano these last few days.

In his enthusiasm for engineering he devoured books like "Engineering
Wonders of the World," "How it Works," "How it is Made," "Engineering
of To-day," "Mechanical Inventions of To-day"; also books on wireless
telegraphy and aviation. A great lover of books, he liked on off-days
to visit London bookshops and rummage their shelves. Very proud he was
of his purchases during these excursions. From time to time he would
have a run round the museums and picture galleries of London or take a
trip to Hampton Court--Wolsey's palace and William III's home--a spot
dear to him for its links with history and for the beauty of its
surroundings. He was always enthralled at the British Museum by the
Rosetta Stone--that key by means of which Champollion unlocked for the
modern world the long-hidden secret of Egypt's ancient civilisation.

A subject which he pursued keenly for a couple of years--from fifteen
to seventeen--and which held him in fascinated wonder, was Astronomy,
a branch of knowledge that happens to be strongly represented among my
books. Often on starry nights he would be a watcher of the heavens.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement,
Ere he went to rest,
Did he look on great Orion, sloping
Slowly to the west.
Many a night he saw the Pleiads, rising
Thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies, tangled
In a silver braid.

It has been stated that most of Paul's vacations were spent in Wales,
but in 1913 he went farther afield, accompanying his mother, his
brother and myself on a tour in Germany. He was enraptured with this,
his first visit to the Continent. On our outward journey we halted at
Brussels, in those days a bright and happy city with nothing in its
cheerful, prosperous air to suggest that in less than a year there
would descend upon it the baleful shadow of the Great War. Much in the
old Germany appealed powerfully to our son, and even of the new
Germany, with its energy and its zeal for learning, he was something
of an admirer. But he hated in modern Germany its brazen materialism
and boastful arro