ught him within its friendly walls.

From this home Mr. Allan went to London to establish a branch of the
Company business. He was accompanied by Mrs. Allan and Edgar, and the
boy was placed in the school of Stoke-Newington, shadowy with the dim
procession of the ages and gloomed over by the memory of Eugene Aram.
The pictured face of the head of the Manor School, Dr. Bransby,
indicates that the hapless boys under his care had stronger than
historic reasons for depression in that ancient institution.

England was thrilling with the triumph of Waterloo, and even
Stoke-Newington must have awakened to the pulsing of the atmosphere.
Not far away were Byron, Shelley, and Keats, at the beginning of their
brief and brilliant careers, the glory and the tragedy of which may
have thrown a prophetic shadow over the American boy who was to travel
a yet darker path than any of these.

Under the elms that bordered the old Roman road, what forms of antique
romance would lie in wait for the dreamy lad, joining him in his
Saturday afternoon walks and telling him stories of their youth in the
ancient days to mingle with the age-youth in the heart of the
dual-souled boy. The green lanes were haunted by memories of
broken-hearted lovers: Earl Percy, mourning for the fair and fickle
Anne; Essex, calling vainly for the royal ring that was to have saved
him; Leicester, the Lucky, a more contented ghost, returning in
pleasing reminiscence to the scenes of his earthly triumphs,
comfortably oblivious of his earthly crimes. What boy would not have
found inspiration in gazing at the massive walls, locked and barred
against him though they were, within which the immortal Robinson
Crusoe sprang into being and found that island of enchantment, the
favorite resort of the juvenile imagination in all the generations
since?

At Stoke-Newington the introspective boy found little to win him from
that self-analysis which later enabled him to mystify a world that
rarely pauses to take heed of the ancient exhortation, "Know thyself."
In the depths of his own being he found the story of "William Wilson,"
with its atmosphere of weird romance and its heart of solemn truth.

Incidentally, he uplifted the reputation of the American boy, so far as
regarded Stoke-Newington's opinion, by assuring his mates when they
marvelled over his athletic triumphs and feats of skill that all the
boys in America could do those things.

At the end of the year in which the f