"
Madge Plunket.]
* * * * *
It goes without saying that, like many thoughtful youths of a melancholy
temperament, impecunious and discontented with their lot, and much given
to the smoking of strong tobacco (on an empty stomach), I continuously
brooded on the problems of existence--free-will and determinism, the
whence and why and whither of man, the origin of evil, the immortality
of the soul, the futility of life, etc., and made myself very miserable
over such questions.
Often the inquisitive passer-by, had he peeped through the blinds of
No.--Wharton Street, Pentonville, late at night, would have been
rewarded by the touching spectacle of a huge, rawboned ex-private in her
Majesty's Life Guards, with his head bowed over the black and yellow
key-board of a venerable square piano-forte (on which he could not
play), dropping the bitter tear of loneliness and _Weltschmertz_ combined.
[Illustration]
It never once occurred to me to seek relief in the bosom of any Church.
Some types are born and not made. I was a born "infidel;" if ever there
was a congenital agnostic, one agnostically constituted from his very
birth, it was I.
Pages:
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120