My mother used to tell us stories about inventors and doctors who gave their lives for the suffering, and poor boys who struggled to the top of the tree, and saintly men who made examples of themselves. There was also the parable of the king who had a very beautiful garden which he threw open to the public. Two students entered; and one, who was the person of whom my mother spoke with a slight sneer in her voice, noticed occasional weeds even in the tulip-beds, but the other, and there she brightened up, found beautiful flowers growing even on rubbish heaps. She kept off the subject of war as much as possible; she always had difficulty in explaining to us how it was that God permitted wars. The Boer War clouded my early childhood; Philip, my eldest brother (who also called himself a Fenian), was a pro-Boer and there was great tension at the breakfast-table between him and my father, whose political views were always orthodox. The sale of the Wimbledon house solved a good many problems; it was getting too full. My mother hated throwing away anything that could possibly, in the most remote contingency, be of any service to anyone. The medicine cupboard was perhaps the most significant corner of the house. Nobody could say that it was untidy, exactly; all the bottles had stoppers, but they were so crowded together that it was impossible for anybody except my mother, who had a long memory, to know what was at the back. Every few years, no doubt, she went through this cupboard. If there was any doubtful bottle she would tentatively re-label it. ‘This must be Alfred’s old bunion salve,’ and another, ‘Strychnine—query?’ Even special medicines prescribed for scarlet-fever or whooping-cough were kept, in case of re-infection. She was always an energetic labeller. She wrote in one of my school prizes: ‘Robert Ranke Graves won this book as a prize for being first in his class in the term’s work and second in examinations. He also won a special prize for divinity, though the youngest boy in the class. Written by his affectionate mother, Amy Graves. Summer, 1908.’ Home-made jam used always to arrive at table well labelled; one small pot read: ‘Gooseberry, lemon and rhubarb—a little shop gooseberry added—Nelly re-boiled.’ In a recent book, _Mrs. Fisher_, I moralized on three sayings and a favourite story of my mother’s. I ascribed them there for the argument’s sake to my Danish grandmother. They were these: ‘Children, I command you, as your mother, never to swing objects around in your hands. The King of Hanover put out his eye by swinging a bead purse.’ ‘Children, I command you, as your mother, to be careful when you carry your candles up to bed. The candle is a little cup of grease.’ ‘There was a man once, a Frenchman, who died of grief because he could never become a mother.’ And the story told in candlelight: