The aim of the school is to develop the spiritual side of man, an excellent aim . . . so long as man does not imagine that by living on the higher plane he is annihilating his earthly self. Everyone there was very, very kind to me, but I did not feel quite in my element, for I am not an obviously spiritual person. I find that I can discuss the higher life best when I have a glass of Pilsener at my elbow and a penny cigar in my mouth. It is clear that I have a complex about the higher life, and it may be a sour-grapes complex. All the same I should like to attend a summer course at Amersfoort and listen to the wise men dilate on the Bhagavadgita, Psycho-analysis and Religion, Plato, Sufism, and other subjects on the programme; anyway I would have no prepossessions and prejudices in listening to Dr. G. R. S. Meads' course of lectures on The Mystical Philosophy and Gnosis of the Trismegistic Tractates. From Amersfoort I went to Amsterdam. "Umsterdum, dree klasse, returig," I said to the ticket office girl. "Third class return?" she asked with a smile and gave me the ticket. I was indignant. It is the most humiliating thing in the world to ask a question in Dutch and to be answered in English. In Rotterdam I had stopped a seafaring looking man and tried to ask him in Dutch what was the way to the Hotel de France. He listened patiently while I struggled with the language; then he spat on my boot. "Hotel de France?" he replied in broad Cockney, "damned if I know." On the way to Amsterdam I got into a carriage full of farmers and one of them made a remark to me. I shook my head. "Engelissman?" he said. I nodded. Then those men began to talk about Engelissmen, and they talked and laughed all the way to Amsterdam. Every now and then one of them would jerk his thumb in my direction. It was a trying journey. Arrived in Amsterdam I made for the Rijks Museum. At the door a seedy-looking man touched me on the arm. "Guide, sir?" "No thank you." "Two hundred rooms, sir! Official guide." "No thank you." He kept pace with me, and in a weak moment I inquired his charge. It was three guilden (five shillings), and I saw at once that the dirty dog had won, for he took on an air of possession. "Righto," I said resignedly, and he led me into the building. He began his tiresome patter. "Thees picture was painted in 1547; beautiful ees eet not? Wonderful arteest!" I sighed. "Take me to the Rembrandts," I said.