Although my childhood was strewn with the memorial wreaths
of dead miseries, I always had a morbid sense that my present
discomforts were immortal. So I had quite made up my mind that I
would continue to be unhappy at school, when the intervention of two
beings whom I had thought utterly remote from me, gave me a new
philosophy and reconciled me to life. The first was a master, who
found me grieving in one of my oubliettes and took me into his study
and tried to draw me out. Kindness always made me ineloquent, and
as I sat in his big basket chair and sniffed the delightful odour of
his pipe, I expressed myself chiefly in woe-begone monosyllables and
hiccoughs. Nevertheless he seemed to understand me very well, and
though he did not say much, I felt by the way in which he puffed out
great, generous clouds of smoke, that he sympathised with me. He told
me to come and see him twice a week, and that I was at liberty to
read any of his books, and in general gave me a sense that I was
unfortunate rather than criminal. This did me good, because a large
part of my unhappiness was due to the fact that constant suppression
by majorities had robbed me of my self-respect. It is better for a
boy to be conceited than to be ashamed of his own nature, and to
shudder when he sees his face reflected in a glass.
My second benefactor was nominally a boy, though in reality he was
nearly as old as the master, and was leaving at the end of the term
to go up to Oxford.
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