XVI 
PREFACE. 
 
Em’ly ” — Emily being my Mother’s name, I might cease 
to respect her.  For the same reason she proscribed the Bab 
Ballads, recommended by a rash tutor, because “ Emily 
Jane was a nursery maid ” !  Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner 
was condemned because of the water-snakes whom he 
“ blessed unaware ” ;  snakes being cursed in Genesis ! 
As it happened, however, I had a backbone in me some 
where.  I had always refused to join the sneaking hypocrite 
gang at Champney’s ;  now I accepted the war, and began to 
fight for my freedom.  I went long walks in the moun-
tains, where my tutors could not follow me, and where 
delightful peasant girls could and did follow me — God 
bless them ! 
One day I had a difference of opinion with a tutor, in 
the course of which he fell from a rock into a loch (whose 
name I forget) near Forsinard.  Memory fails to recall the 
actual cause of dispute ;  but I think I had thrown his 
fishing-rod into the loch, and thought that it was expedient 
for him to try and retrieve it. 
The same night he found me in the heather with Belle 
Mc. Kay the local beauty (God bless her !), and gave me up 
as a bad job. 
So I fought the swine !  They sent me to Malvern, where 
my weakness made me the prey of every bully, and saved me 
from the attention of every budding Eulenburg.  Sodomy 
was the rule at Malvern ;  my study-companion used even to 
take money for it.  I cunningly used my knowledge of the 
fact to get taken away from the school.