"We talked it over in the train. Of course, I was all for the royal road and had plenty of good arguments in favour of it. What I want you to notice is that my mother was in favour of it, too! Think of it. She had been brought up in a hard school. She knew what it was to live sparingly and how useful early discipline was. She had told me often that all great men had a hard struggle. Therefore, how could I be a great man if I didn't have a hard struggle? And yet she was so obsessed with this notion of gentility that she deliberately gave me a soft time. She paid out three hundred dollars every year for three years.... "That time was what you might call a comedy of errors. I am not going to admit that I idled, for it is not true. I was ambitious. Since I was to be an engineer I went at it bald-headed. I went to polytechnics and night-schools, I spent whole nights in study, and did everything that any young chap could do. The whole of my efforts did not amount to a row of rivets. Why? I was up against the gentility again. I met the professional classes face to face. "There were three other chaps there as pupils, and it so happened that they were every one from the great public schools. One was from Haileybury, one from Eton, and another from Winchester. When they found I was not one of them they ragged me, of course, which was good and proper. I often think the ragging in public schools is one of the few useful things they do there. When these men found I intended to study my profession they thought I was stark mad. They were all nice young fellows and had money coming to them. Why should they bother? They thought I ought to look at it in the same light. Eventually I did. It was three to one. I found out that any amount of study and genuine merit would not carry me along in a profession. It was all well enough to be an engineer; but the main thing was to be a gentleman. Gradually I dropped the study, took afternoons off to go down west and began to worry my mother for more money. "So it went on for the three years, my mother patiently waiting for me to get through my time and start in earnest as a professional man. My brother was at school, the one near Maldon, and was giving her a lot of trouble. I only saw him during the vacations. He was a big fellow, while as you see, I'm rather on the small side. I don't know that that should cause anybody any amusement! But because I was twenty and he was thirteen and nearly as tall as I was, he was for ever laughing. It seemed to him a huge joke. And as I thought about it the idea came to me that even nature was on his side and against me. It almost seemed as though she'd not only given him the brains, but the stature to be the great man my father and mother longed for. He was good-looking too, I remember, even then. My mother had to pack off a servant that vacation, a silly giggling little girl.