imagination than it would have ever done in reality. Indeed, there can be hardly any doubt that this is so, for we are only half-conscious of what is happening. Reality clouds, our actions mitigate, our perception; we can see clearly only when we look back or forwards. There is something very merciful about reality; if there were not, we should not be able to live at all. But to the journey. How shall I tell it? The third part must have been the most painful, so clearly do I remember it: the curious agony of mind caused by a sudden recognition of objects long forgotten--a tree or a bit of bog-land. The familiar country, evocative of a great part of my childhood, carried my thoughts hither and thither. My thoughts ranged like the swallows; the birds had no doubt just arrived, and in swift elliptical flights they hunted for gnats along the banks of the old weedy canal. That weedy canal along which the train travelled took my thoughts back to the very beginning of my life, when I stood at the carriage window and plagued my father and mother with questions regarding the life of the barges passing up and down. And it was the sudden awakenings from these memories that were so terrible--the sudden thrust of the thought that I was going westward to see my mother die, and that nothing could save her from death or me from seeing her die. Perhaps to find one's self suddenly deprived of all will is the greatest suffering of all. How many times did I say to myself, "Nothing can save me unless I get out at the next station," and I imagined myself taking a car and driving away through the country! But if I did such a thing I should be looked upon as a madman. "One is bound on a wheel," I muttered, and I began to think how men under sentence of death must often wonder why they were selected especially for such a fate, and the mystery, the riddle of it all, must be perhaps the greatest part of their pain.