About this time he took silk, sacrificing nearly half of his income. He would have preferred to wait longer, had he not perceived that if he did wait, his friends ---- and ---- and ---- ---- would be taking silk before him. And, since he meant to be a judge first, this must naturally be guarded against. The prospective loss of so much income made him for a moment restful and expansive, as if he felt that he had been pushed almost too far by his competitive genius; and so he found time to marry--it being the commencement of the long vacation. For six weeks he hardly thought of his friends ---- and ---- and ---- ----, but near the end of September he was shocked back into a more normal frame of mind by the news that they also had been offered and had taken silk. It behoved him, he felt, to put his wife behind him and go back into harness. It would be just like those fellows to get ahead of him, if they could; and he curtailed his honeymoon by quite three weeks. Not two years, however, elapsed before it became clear to him that to keep his place he must enter Parliament. And against his own natural feelings, against even the inclinations of his country, he secured a seat at the general election and began sitting. What, then, was his chagrin to find that his friend ----, and his friend ----, and even his friend ---- ----, had also secured seats, and were sitting when he got there! What with the courts, and what with ‘the House,’ he became lean and very yellow; and his wife complained. He determined to give her a child every year to keep her quiet; for he felt that he must have perfect peace in his home surroundings if he were to maintain his position in the great life race for which he had started, knowing that his friends ---- and ---- and ---- ---- would never hesitate to avail themselves of his ill health, to beat him. None of those wretched fellows were having so many children. He did not find his work in Parliament congenial; it seemed to him unreal. For he could not get his mind--firmly fixed on himself and the horizon--to believe that all those little measures which he was continually passing would benefit people with whose lives he really had not time or inclination to be familiar. When one had got up, prepared two cases, had breakfasted, walk down to the courts, sat there from half-past ten to four, walked to ‘the House,’ sat there a little longer than his friend ---- ---- (the worst of them), spoken if his friend ---- had spoken, or if he thought his friend ---- were going to speak, had dinner, prepared two cases, kissed his wife, mentally compared his last picture with that last one of his friend’s, had a glass of barley-water, and gone to bed--when one had done all this, there really was not time for living his own life, much less any one else’s. He sometimes thought he would have to give up doing so much; but that, of course, was out of the question, seeing that his friends would at once shoot ahead. He took “Vitogen” instead.