practiced in ordinary Irish schools. It was for years the only thing in which I had to admit the superiority of John Bull.
The ideal of a gentleman is not a very high one. Emerson says somewhere that the evolution of the gentleman is the chief spiritual product of the last two or three centuries; but the concept, it seems to me, dwarfs the ideal. A «gentleman» to me is a thing of some parts but no magnitude: one should be a gentleman and much more: a thinker, guide or artist. English custom in the games taught me the value and need of courtesy, and athletics practiced assiduously did much to steel and strengthen my control of all my bodily desires: they gave my mind and reason the mastery of me. At the same time they taught me the laws of health and the necessity of obeying them. I found out that by drinking little at meals I could reduce my weight very quickly and was thereby enabled to jump higher than ever; but when I went on reducing I learned that there was a limit beyond which, if I persisted, I began to lose strength: athletics taught me what the French call the juste milieu, the middle path of moderation. When I was about fourteen I discovered that to think of love before going to sleep was to dream of it during the night. And this experience taught me something else; if I repeated any lesson just before going to sleep, I knew it perfectly next morning; the mind, it seems, works even during unconsciousness. Often since, I have solved problems during sleep in mathematics and in chess that have puzzled me during the day.
Chapter III. School Days in England
In my thirteenth year the most important experience took place of my schoolboy life. Walking out one day with a West Indian boy of sixteen or so, I admitted that I was going to be «confirmed» in the Church of England. I was intensely religious at this time and took the whole rite with appalling seriousness. «Believe and thou shalt be saved» rang in my ears day and night, but I had no happy conviction. Believe what? «Believe in Me, Jesus.» Of course I believe; then I should be happy, and I was not happy. «Believe not» and eternal damnation and eternal torture follow. My soul revolted at the iniquity of the awful condemnation. What became of the myriads who had not heard of Jesus? It was all a horrible puzzle to me; but the radiant figure and sweet teaching of Jesus just enabled me to believe and resolve to live as he had lived, unselfishly-purely. I never liked that word «purely» and used to relegate it to the darkest background of my thought. But I would try to be good-I'd try at least!
«Do you believe all the fairy stories in the Bible?» my companion asked. «Of course I do,» I replied. «It's the Word of God, isn't it?» «Who is God?» asked the West Indian. «He made the world,» I added, «all this wonder,» and with a gesture I included earth and sky. «Who made God?» asked my companion. I turned away stricken: in a flash I saw I had been building on a word taught me: «who made God?» I walked away alone, up the long meadow by the little brook, my thoughts in a whirl: story after story that I had accepted were now to me «fairy stories.» Jonah hadn't lived three days in a whale's belly. A man couldn't get down a whale's throat. The Gospel of Matthew began with Jesus' pedigree, showing that he had been born of the seed of David through Joseph, his father, and in the very next chapter you are told that Joseph wasn't his father; but the Holy Ghost. In an hour the whole fabric of my spiritual beliefs lay in ruins about me: I believed none of it, not a jot, nor a tittle: I felt as though I had been stripped naked to the cold. Suddenly a joy came to me: if Christianity was all lies and fairy tales like Mohammedanism, then the prohibitions of it were ridiculous and I could kiss and have any girl who would yield to me. At once I was partially reconciled to my spiritual nakedness: there was compensation. The loss of my belief was for a long time very painful to me. One day I told Stackpole of my infidelity, and he recommended me to read Butler's Analogy and keep an open mind. Butler finished what the West Indian had begun and in my thirst for some certainty I took up a course of deeper reading. In Stackpole's rooms one day I came across a book of Huxley's Essays; in an hour I had swallowed them and proclaimed myself an «agnostic»; that's what I was; I knew nothing surely, but was willing to learn. I aged ten years mentally in the next six months: I was always foraging for books to convince me and at length got hold of Hume's argument against miracles. That put an end to all my doubts, satisfied me finally. Twelve years later, when studying philosophy in Goettingen, I saw that Hume's reasoning was not conclusive, but for the time I was cured. At midsummer I refused to be confirmed. For weeks before, I had been reading the Bible for the most incredible stories in it and the smut, which I retailed at night to the delight of the boys in the big bedroom.
This year as usual I spent the midsummer holidays in Ireland. My father had made his house with my sister Nita where Vernon happened to be sent by his bank. This summer was passed in Ballybay, in County Monaghan, I think. I remember little or nothing about the village save that there was a noble series of reed-fringed lakes near the place which gave good duck and snipe shooting to Vernon in the autumn.
These holidays were memorable to me for several incidents. A conversation began one day at dinner between my sister and my eldest brother about making up to girls and winning them. I noticed with astonishment that my brother Vernon was very deferential to my sister's opinion on the matter, so I immediately got hold of Nita after the lunch and asked her to explain to me what she meant by «flattery.» «You said all girls like flattery. What did you mean?» «I mean,» she said, «they all like to be told they are pretty, that they have good eyes or good teeth or good hair, as the case may be, or that they are tall and nicely made. They all like their good points noticed and praised.» «Is that all?» I asked.
«Oh no!» she said, «they all like their dress noticed too and especially their hat; if it suits their face, if it's very pretty and so forth. All girls think that if you notice their clothes you really like them, for most men don't.» «Number two,» I said to myself.
«Is there anything else?» «Of course,» she said, «you must say that the girl you are with is the prettiest girl in the room or in town-in fact, is quite unlike any other girl, superior to all the rest, the only girl in the world for you. All women like to be the only girl in the world for as many men as possible.» «Number three,» I said to myself: «Don't they like to be kissed?» I asked.
«That comes afterwards,» said my sister. «Lots of men begin with kissing and pawing you about before you even like them. That puts you off. Flattery first of looks and dress, then devotion, and afterwards the kissing comes naturally.» «Number four!» I went over these four things again and again to myself and began trying them even on the older girls and women about me and soon found that they all had a better opinion of me almost immediately. I remember practicing my new knowledge first on the younger Miss Raleigh whom, I thought, Vernon liked. I just praised her as my sister had advised: first her eyes and hair (she had very pretty blue eyes). To my astonishment she smiled on me at once; accordingly I went on to say she was the prettiest girl in town and suddenly she took my head in her hands and kissed me, saying, «You're a dear boy!» But my experience was yet to come. There was a very good looking man whom I met two or three times at parties; I think his name was Tom Connolly: I'm not certain, though I ought not to forget it; for I can see him as plainly as if he were before me now; five feet ten or eleven, very handsome, with shaded violet eyes. Everybody was telling a story about him that had taken place on his visit to the Viceroy in Dublin. It appeared that the Vicereine had a very pretty French maid and Tom Connolly made up to the maid. One night the Vicereine was taken ill and sent her husband upstairs to call the maid. When the husband knocked at the maid's door, saying that his wife wanted her, Tom Connolly replied in a strong voice: «It's unfriendly of you to interrupt a man at such a time.» The Viceroy, of course, apologized immediately and hurried away, but like a fool he told the story to his wife, who was very indignant, and next day at breakfast she put an aide-de-camp on her right and Tom Connolly's place far down the table. As usual, Connolly came in late and the moment he saw the arrangement of the places, he took it all in and went over to the aide-de-camp. «Now, young man,» he said, «you'll have many opportunities later, so give me my place,» and forthwith turned him out of his place and took his seat by the Vicereine, though she would barely speak to him. At length Tom Connolly said to her: «I wouldn't have thought it of you, for you're so kind. Fancy blaming a poor young girl the first time she yields to a man!» This response made the whole table roar and established Connolly's fame for impudence throughout Ireland.
Everyone was talking of him and I went about after him all through the gardens and whenever he spoke, my large ears were cocked to hear any word of wisdom that might fall from his lips. At length he noticed me and asked me why I followed him about. «Everybody says you can win any woman you like, Mr. Connolly,» I said half- ashamed. «I want to know how you do it, what you say to them.» «Faith, I don't know,» he said, «but you're a funny little fellow. What age are you to be asking such questions?» «I'm fourteen,» I said boldly.
«I wouldn't have given you fourteen, but even fourteen is too young; you must wait.» So I withdrew but still kept within earshot.
