And how things might have shaped themselves had my father lived, I cannot say. But that was not to be. For in January, 1880, with little warning, a tragedy swept away the home that in my young seeming was the one beautifully permanent, solid fact in the whole world. My father and mother died within a day of one another and were buried on the same morning. And there was no home, only a memory.
CHAPTER III
STUDENT DAYS
Ah, you have much to learn; we can’t know all things at twenty.
Clough: “The Bothie of Tober-na-vuolich.”
As a great writer says, “I am naturally averse to egotism and hate self-laudation consumedly,” and yet I must tell this story once again, for it seems to me the natural motto of my undertaking. I was passing up Peter Street away from my Court when I heard two railway clerks discussing a case I had just decided. This was their dialogue, with formal parts, as we say in the law, omitted.
“1st Clerk: How the —— did he get to £5?
“2nd Clerk: I don’t know.
“1st Clerk: I think he’s a —— fool.