It was that which taught me to read. What had seemed to me not worth doing when I had only myself to please, for I could never realise that my parents, so to speak, counted, became all at once a necessity, because now there were others to reckon with. It was discovered that in the midst of my unfathomable ignorance I had one natural talent; I could spell, without ever being taught. I saw other boys poring over the columns of their spelling-books, trying in vain to get the order of the letters into their heads. I never even read them through; they came to me by ear, instinctively. Finding myself able to do without trying something that the others could not succeed in doing at all, I felt that I could be hardly less intelligent than they, and I felt the little triumph of outdoing others. I began to learn greedily. The second day I was at school I found the schoolroom door shut when I came into the playground, and I was told that I could not come in. I climbed the gymnasium ladder and looked through the window. Two boys were having a furious fight, and the bigger boys of the school were gravely watching it. I was completely fascinated; it was a new sensation. That day a boy bigger than myself jeered at me. I struck him. There was a rapid fight before all the school, and I knocked him down. I never needed to fight again, nor did I. When I had once begun to learn, I learned certain things very quickly, and others not at all. I never understood a single proposition of Euclid; I never could learn geography, or draw a map. Arithmetic and algebra I could do moderately, so long as I merely had to follow the rules; the moment common sense was required I was helpless. History I found entertaining, and I could even remember the dates, because they had to do with facts which were like stories. French and Latin I picked up easily, Greek with more difficulty. German I was never able to master; I had an instinctive aversion to the mere sound of it, and I could not remember the words; there were no pegs in my memory for them to hang upon, as there were for the words of all the Romance languages. When a thing did not interest me, nothing could make me learn it. I was not obstinate, I was helpless. I have never been able to make out why geography was so completely beyond my power. I have travelled since then over most of Europe, and I have learned geography with the sight of my eyes. But with all my passion for places I have never been able to find my way in them until I have come to find it instinctively, and I suppose that is why the names in the book or on the map said nothing to me. At an examination when I was easily taking half the prizes, I have read through my papers in geography and in Euclid, and taken them up to the head-master's desk, and handed them back to him, calmly telling him that I could not answer a single question. I was never able to go in for matriculation, or any sort of general public examination, to the great