Before I went to school it was my good fortune to be placed under the special care of my eldest sister, Jane. She was twenty years older than myself, and had acquired much practical experience in the management of the younger members of the family. I could not have had a more careful teacher. She initiated me into the depths of A B C, and by learning me to read she gave me the key to the greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers who have ever lived.

But all this was accomplished at first in a humdrum and tentative way. About seventy years ago children's books were very uninteresting. In the little stories manufactured for children, the good boy ended in a coach-and-four, and the bad boy in a ride to Tyburn. The good boys must have been a set of little snobs and prigs, and I could scarcely imagine that they could ever have lived as they were represented in these goody books. If so, they must have been the most tiresome and uninteresting vermin that can possibly be imagined.

After my sister had done what she could for me, I was sent to school to learn English. I was placed under the tuition of a leading teacher called Knight, whose schoolroom was in the upper storey of a house in George Street.