two and a half per
cent, not more.

This L3,700 odd I have always devoted to the upkeep of the place, which
is therefore in first-rate order. The rest I live on, or save.

These arrangements, with the beautifying and furnishing of the house
and the restoration of the church in memory of my father, occupied and
amused me for a year or so, but when they were finished time began to
hang heavy on my hands. What was the use of possessing about L20,000 a
year when there was nothing upon which it could be spent? For after
all my own wants were few and simple and the acquisition of valuable
pictures and costly furniture is limited by space. Oh! in my small way
I was like the weary King Ecclesiast. For I too made me great works
and had possessions of great and small cattle (I tried farming and
lost money over it!) and gathered me silver and gold and the peculiar
treasure of kings, which I presume means whatever a man in authority
chiefly desires, and so forth. But "behold all was vanity and vexation
of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."

So, notwithstanding my wealth and health and the deference which is
the rich man's portion, especially when the limit of his riches is not
known, it came about that I too "hated life," and this when I was not
much over thirty. I did not know what to do; for Society as the word
is generally understood, I had no taste; it bored me; horse-racing and
cards I loathed, who had already gambled too much on a big scale. The
killing of creatures under the name of sport palled upon me, indeed I
began to doubt if it were right, while the office of a junior county
magistrate in a place where there was no crime, only occupied me an hour
or two a month.

Lastly my neighbours were few and with all due deference to them,
extremely dull. At least I could not understand them because in them
there did not seem to be anything to understand, and I am quite certain
that they did not understand me. More, when they came to learn that I
was radical in my views and had written certain "dreadful" and
somewhat socialistic books in the form of fiction, they both feared and
mistrusted me as an enemy to their particular section of the race. As
I had not married and showed no inclination to do so, their womenkind
also, out of their intimate knowledge, proclaimed that I led an immoral
life, though a little reflection would have shown them that there was
no one in the neighbourhood which for a time I seldom left,