s, the stature, bulk and big assemblance

IV, Pa

grandfather, though my interest is centred in the man. In a sense I have written his life as it was long before he was born, when he was nothing more than a growing presentiment. I have found it instructive and entertaining to

n innocents may take my imaginary child instead, for there is no remedy for the murder of a living soul, but, should it ever happen that my bantling dem

fect freedom-by which I shall be taken to mean Licence. Freedom is a much-abused word, and when you use it to seven men and women out of ten they at once think of a world full of satyrs. When I use the word Freedom, I think of a world full of what Walt Whitman, [Pg viii]who had no sense of humour when he took pen in hand, called "superb persons," that is, men and women who are not imprisoned in their own thoughts. Only a man's own mind can make him a slave, and every healthy human being from first to last of conscious life struggles for the freedom of his own mind. We set about it often in strange ways and make dreadful muddles, but the fight itself renders life enjoyable, even if the aim be never attained. Freedom, of course, like everything else, is subject to the l

composition, I must protest my optimism, believing human life to be like a river, that, if it be fouled,