THE EDUCATION OF UNCLE PAUL [Illustration] MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO THE EDUCATION OF UNCLE PAUL BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD AUTHOR OF ‘JIMBO,’ ‘JOHN SILENCE,’ ‘THE LISTENER,’ ETC. MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1909 Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of infinite space; it is To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour; it is to know not as yet that you are under sentence of life, nor petition that it is to be commuted into death.—FRANCIS THOMPSON. TO ALL THOSE CHILDREN BETWEEN THE AGES OF EIGHT AND EIGHTY WHO LED ME TO ‘THE CRACK’; AND HAVE SINCE JOURNEYED WITH ME THROUGH IT INTO THE LAND ‘BETWEEN YESTERDAY AND TO-MORROW’ CHAPTER I ... I stand as mute As one with full strong music in his heart Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute. ALICE MEYNELL. All night the big liner had been plunging heavily, but towards morning she entered quieter water, and when the passengers woke, her rising and falling over the great swells was so easy that even the sea-sick women admitted the relief. ‘Land in sight, sir! We shall see Liverpool within twenty hours now, barring fog.’