My _Apologia_ must be this: I worked hard because I was afraid of the consequences if I didn't, not at all because I was naturally industrious, energetic, or ingenious, for I know that I was none of these things, or rather that I had none of these fine qualities. I read whenever I could, whatever I could, because I loved reading for its own sake, and I read good stuff because I had a natural distaste for rubbish. A good book could and can still make me forget all earthly ills, all my surroundings, in fact make me cry and laugh and wonder, while a bad book makes me absolutely ill if I persevere in reading it. To return to another development of my business as a picture-framer consequent upon opening a shop. Delightful people came in and talked, first about pictures and their frames, then about art in all its branches (which by the way necessitated me reading up "Art"), and then by an easy transition to any subject in which they were interested at that particular time. Sometimes these breaks in the greyness of everyday life were welcome, and led to most useful acquaintanceships and friendships; but sometimes when I had an order to finish and deliver for urgent reasons, I talked with a wild pre-occupied look and itching hands, longing to tell my suave interlocutor to go to Jehannum or elsewhere, and let me get on with my work, yet not daring to do so for fear of offending a potential customer. Yet very often when such a one had given an order for a one-and-ninepenny frame and had gone away, my over-wrought nerves refused to allow me to finish what I had in hand. Because, principally, of the glass. Now your born glass-cutter has no nerves, cannot have. In the nice handling of a diamond across a virgin sheet of fifteen-ounce glass, the slightest imaginative tremor must have fatal results, that is as regards the profit to be made from clean cutting. But this important matter must be much more particularly explained, for to me it has often meant the difference between profit and loss, to say nothing of the pains I endured by reason of my inability to swear--for only language lurid, loud, and long, could relieve my labouring bosom, I felt sure, on many of these occasions.