lives of
many men and women. I want in this book to track it, if I can, to its
lair, to see what it is, where its awful power lies, and what, if
anything, one can do to resist it. It seems the most unreal thing in
the world, when one is on the other side of it; and yet face to face
with it, it has a strength, a poignancy, a paralysing power, which
makes it seem like a personal and specific ill-will, issuing in a sort
of dreadful enchantment or spell, which renders it impossible to
withstand. Yet, strange to say, it has not exercised its power in the
few occasions in my life when it would seem to have been really
justified. Let me quote an instance or two which will illustrate what I
mean.

I was confronted once with the necessity of a small surgical operation,
quite unexpectedly. If I had known beforehand that it was to be done, I
should have depicted every incident with horror and misery. But the
moment arrived, and I found myself marching to my bedroom with a
surgeon and a nurse, with a sense almost of amusement at the adventure.

I was called upon once in Switzerland to assist with two guides in the
rescue of an unfortunate woman who had fallen from a precipice, and had
to be brought down, dead or alive. We hurried up through the
pine-forest with a chair, and found the poor creature alive indeed, but
with horrible injuries--an eye knocked out, an arm and a thigh broken,
her ulster torn to ribbons, and with more blood about the place in
pools than I should have thought a human body could contain. She was
conscious; she had to be lifted into the chair, and we had to discover
where she belonged; she fainted away in the middle of it, and I had to
go on and break the news to her relations. If I had been told
beforehand what would have had to be done, I do not think I could have
faced it; but it was there to do, and I found myself entirely capable
of taking part, and even of wondering all the time that it was possible
to act.

Again, I was once engulfed in a crevasse, hanging from the ice-ledge
with a portentous gulf below, and a glacier-stream roaring in the
darkness. I could get no hold for foot or hand, my companions could not
reach me or extract me; and as I sank into unconsciousness, hearing my
own expiring breath, I knew that I was doomed; but I can only say,
quite honestly and humbly, that I had no fear at all, and only dimly
wondered what arrangements would be made at Eton, where I was then a
master, to accommo