PREFACE. 
XV 
he knows how his missionary brother Jack seduced to so-
domy his missionary brother Fred, he may still be ignorant 
of how that brother Fred (one of my tutors) attempted to 
seduce me in his own mother’s house at Maze Hill.  This 
came a little later ;  and I knew exactly what he was doing, 
as it happened.  I let him go as far as he did, with the deli-
berate intention of making sure on that point. 
I think my readers will agree — enough of my tutors ! 
I ought to make an honourable exception of one Archi-
bald Douglas, an Oxford man and a traveller.  He taught 
me sense and manhood, and I shall not easily forget my debt 
to him.  I hear he is dead — may earth lie light upon him ! 
Of course my Mother and her brother my uncle Tom 
couldn’t stand him.  (I must excuse my mother and my 
Uncle.  The former was the best of all possible mothers, only 
marred beyond belief by the religious monomania which 
perhaps started in what one may call “ Hysteria of Widow-
hood ” ;  the latter a typical sexual degenerate.) They 
stole his letters and faked up some excuse for getting rid 
of him.  And if “ an orphan’s curse can drag to hell a spi-
rit from on high ” what of the curse of a child on those who 
betrayed him in their bigotry and meanness to such tor-
ture as I have described ? 
My whole soul cramped ;  society denied me ;  books 
debarred me, with the rare exceptions of Scott, Ballantyne, 
and some Dickens, with a few even worse ! 
To illustrate the domestic principles of literary criticism : 
I was forbidden David Copperfield because of “ little