In “Un Pèlerin d’Angkor,” which for the sake of its wonderful descriptions of tropical scenery is to me one of Pierre Loti’s most charming books, he tells us how when he was a little child he was held in chains by the idea of the mysterious temples hidden away, forgotten, buried in the teeming jungles of Cambodia, and how at last his dream was realized in that long pilgrimage up the Mekong river of which his poetic descriptions, carrying us with a magician’s wand into the mysterious silences of tropical forests, are tinged with that melancholy which seems inseparable from his genius, even when he calls up the happiness of reaching the long-wished for goal of a cherished ambition. I once asked him why he was so pessimistic—why that persistent note of sadness? He answered very simply, “La vie est triste,” and his eyes had that far away, yearning look, a characteristic of his, which seems so strange in a man whose life has been one long chain of brilliant successes. Well! I too, as a child, had dreams which carried me far away. A kind aunt had given me a set of so-called rice-paper pictures of lovely imperial ladies with architectural structures of hair on their heads, gentlemen clad in purple silk robes with ephods embroidered with five-clawed golden dragons, drawings of vividly-coloured flowers and fruit, of horror-striking tortures, unheard of out of Tartarus, being inflicted upon bleeding criminals. But beyond all was the story of Aladdin falling in love with the Princess Badroulbadour on her way to the bath at Peking. My young brain was aflame with the longing to go to China and see all these things. How to manage it? Should I ever get nearer to that land of wonders than a certain fascinating curiosity shop in Hanway Yard—now Hanway Street—a beloved and much-haunted place full of bowls and jars, eggshell china, rosebacked plates and lange Elizen, which now would fetch several pounds for every shilling that they cost then. That dream never left me. It haunted my boyhood and my young manhood and, like Pierre Loti’s cherished dream, it came into life at last.