weeklies crammed with imagination that the cheap boys' "comics" of

to-day have replaced. At fourteen, when he emerged from the valley of

the shadow of education, there survived something, indeed it survived

still, obscured and thwarted, at five and thirty, that pointed--not

with a visible and prevailing finger like the finger of that beautiful

woman in the picture, but pointed nevertheless--to the idea that there

was interest and happiness in the world. Deep in the being of Mr.

Polly, deep in that darkness, like a creature which has been beaten

about the head and left for dead but still lives, crawled a persuasion

that over and above the things that are jolly and "bits of all right,"

there was beauty, there was delight, that somewhere--magically

inaccessible perhaps, but still somewhere, were pure and easy and

joyous states of body and mind.

He would sneak out on moonless winter nights and stare up at the

stars, and afterwards find it difficult to tell his father where he

had been.

He would read tales about hunters and explorers, and imagine himself

riding mustangs as fleet as the wind across the prairies of Western

America, or coming as a conquering and adored white man into the

swarming villages of Central Africa. He shot bears with a revolver--a

cigarette in the other hand--and made a necklace of their teeth and

claws for the chief's beautiful young daughter. Also he killed a lion

with a pointed stake, stabbing through the beast's heart as it stood

over him.

The History of Mr Polly