The first book that I connect with a specific inquiry was one that I had certainly failed to order. It was 'anything of Walter de la Mare's'; and I felt a Philistine for having nothing, but a fool for supposing for a moment that I had pitched my hut within the boundaries of Philistia. There might have been a conspiracy to undeceive me on the point without delay. The Poetry Shelf (despite deficiencies so promptly proven) received attention from the start. I forget if it was Mr. de la Mare's admirer who presently took out _The Golden Treasury_, of which we mercifully had several copies; it was certainly a Jock. I showed him the Shelf, and could have wrung his hand for the tone in which he murmured 'Keats!' It was reverential, awe-stricken and just right. Clearly _his_ Dominie had not abused the taws. In the meantime I had taken a deposit on three prose volumes. These were they, these the first three authors to cross my counter: 1. George Meredith: _The Ordeal of Richard Feverel_. 2. Robert Louis Stevenson: _Across the Plains_. 3. Hilaire Belloc: _Mr. Clutterbuck's Election_. As I say, it seemed like a conspiracy--but I swear I was not one of the conspirators! They were--my benefactor already--the pianist, and his friends; three young privates in the R.A.M.C., all afterwards great friends of mine. Of course, this form was too good to be true of the mass; and the particular Field Ambulance to which they belonged was an unusually brainy unit, as I came to know it through many other representatives; but I shall always be grateful to that musical young Meredithian for the start he gave me, and may this mite of acknowledgment meet his spectacles. On the same opening page of my first day-book, to be sure, a less rarefied level is reached by some comparatively pedestrian stuff, including a work of Mr. Charles Garvice and no fewer than two wastrels 'of my own composure' (as the village organist had it); but my place (though gratifying) was obviously due to an ulterior curiosity; and among the twenty-three books in all that went out that afternoon, there was a further burst of four that went far to restore the higher standard: they were _Lorna Doone_, _My Novel_, _Nicholas Nickleby_ and _Oliver Twist_. The two first fell to Jocks; the Blackmore masterpiece was read forthwith from cover to cover in the trenches, and that Jock came down by special permission for something else as good!