to hold the
mottled soap, which curiously resembled the infant's limbs when
pinched with cold; and so, I suppose, I would steal out and join the
lady and her dog, walking a little to one side as we drifted slowly up
the dull suburban street into the park. Sometimes we went as far as
the lake, and I have faint memories of a bun, purchased by the dame,
and munched by me as we watched the gardeners trimming the beds. I do
not wish to suggest that this lady was my first love--I have never
carried my senophile proclivities to that extent. She was, to me, the
antithesis of mottled soap and cradle-rocking, and as such she lives
in my memory. I am also grateful to her for giving me my first glimpse
of a world outside the front door; an ugly world, it is true, a world
of raucous bargaining and ill-bred enjoyment, but a world
nevertheless.

Why should I tell of so trivial an incident? Bear with me a moment.

Since I have been at sea I have often reflected upon the fact that
many phases of my life are even now going on, quite heedless of
my absence, quite apathetic of my very existence, in fact. How
marvellous, it seems to me, to know that life at my old school is
proceeding upon exactly the same lines as when I was there! At this
moment I can see, in imagination, the whole routine; and I can tell
at any time what the school is doing. Again, I know precisely the
goings-in and the comings-out of all the staff at my old employer's;
picture to myself with ease what is happening at any instant. More
wonderful still, I know what my friend is doing at this moment. I know
that he is seated in his room at the Institute, talking to our friends
(perchance of me), ere they descend to their lectures at seven
o'clock. At ten, while I am "turned in," he will be leaving the
Institute, and the 'bus will put him down at his favourite hostelry.
At this moment he is smoking a cigarette! But then, of course, he is
always smoking a cigarette!

It is a far cry from a stealthy stroll with an old woman in Finsbury
Park to a twenty-thousand-mile tramp in a freighter, and yet one is
the logical outcome of the other, arrived at by unconscious yet
inevitable steps. Listen again.

At a later period, when I had discovered that tools were a necessary
complement to my intellectual well-being, I brought my insatiable
desire to _make_ something to the assistance of my equally insatiable
desire to _go_ somewhere. From a sugar-box and a pair of perambulator
w