He did not project, like Henley or like Wilde, an image of
himself, because, having all his imagination set on making and
doing, he had little self-knowledge. He imagined instead new
conditions of making and doing; and, in the teeth of those
scientific generalisations that cowed my boyhood, I can see some
like imagining in every great change, believing that the first
flying fish leaped, not because it sought 'adaptation' to the air,
but out of horror of the sea.
X
Soon after I began to attend the lectures, a French class was
started in the old coach-house for certain young socialists who
planned a tour in France, and I joined it and was for a time a
model student constantly encouraged by the compliments of the old
French mistress. I told my father of the class, and he asked me to
get my sisters admitted. I made difficulties and put off speaking
of the matter, for I knew that the new and admirable self I was
making would turn, under family eyes, into plain rag doll. How
could I pretend to be industrious, and even carry dramatization to
the point of learning my lessons, when my sisters were there and
knew that I was nothing of the kind? But I had no argument I could
use and my sisters were admitted.
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