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قراءة كتاب While I Remember
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
an exhaustive treatise; it is at once the effect and the cause of a corresponding change in morals; and, whatever progress the future have in store, those who first drew breath in Queen Victoria's reign may congratulate themselves, if it be a matter for congratulation, on having passed in thirty years from the civilisation of the Stone Age to that of the Cities of the Plain.
This book is as deliberately incomplete as the sketch-book of a traveller who records some few of the scenes that he most wishes to conjure up again and none that he would prefer to forget. Whether my reminiscences and reflections at thirty-three or at any other age are of interest to anyone I must leave my readers to determine, comforting myself with the thought that the years through which I have lived are themselves of interest and reminding those who regard memoir-writing as a prerogative of septuagenarians that in the life of most men there is a time when they are unable to look forward with confidence and must be deemed fortunate if they can look back without regret.
I have striven to avoid inaccuracy, but I have been compelled to write at a distance from all works of reference.
S. McK.
Talcahuano,
31 January, 1921.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | ||
| I | Westminster | 17 | |
| II | A Setting and a Date | 40 | |
| III | Christ Church | 59 | |
| IV | London and Elsewhere | 80 | |
| V | The Fringe of Politics | 100 | |
| VI | On the Eve | 132 | |
| VII | The Fringe of War | 154 | |
| VIII | At the Liberal Grave-side | 183 | |
| IX | On the Road to Washington—and After | 201 | |
| X | London Again | 226 | |
| XI | Demobilisation | 244 | |
| XII | Literary Totems | 268 | |
| XIII | Politics in a Dissolving View | 290 | |
| XIV | A Memory Retouched | 314 | |
WHILE I REMEMBER
WHILE I REMEMBER
CHAPTER I
WESTMINSTER
"A man, whom the fond imagination of his worshippers invested with the attributes of a god, gave his life for the life of the world; after infusing from his own body a fresh current of vital energy into the stagnant veins of nature, he was cut off from among the living before his failing strength should initiate a universal decay, and his place was taken by another who played, like all his predecessors, the ever-recurring drama of the divine resurrection and death.... The sceptic ... will reduce Jesus of Nazareth to the level of a multitude of other victims of a barbarous superstition, and will see in him no more than a moral teacher, whom the fortunate accident of his execution invested with the crown, not merely of a martyr, but of a god...."
J. G. Frazer: The Golden Bough.
I
On the last Sunday of July, in the year 1906, Little Dean's Yard filled slowly with sixty or seventy boys in evening dress. All but about ten wore the black gown, which is one mark of the Westminster Scholar, and, over the gown, a white surplice open or buttoned according to the seniority of the wearer. It was not yet ten o'clock in the morning; but on Election Sunday all King's Scholars and Major Candidates appear in evening clothes, the Major Candidates distinguished by carnations of the prized Westminster pink which has been worn since the day, nearly a hundred years ago, when the school rowed against Eton and settled that colour question by trial of strength: the victors were to have pink, the vanquished blue; and the deeper pink of Leander derives from the Westminster founders of the club.
These were the last few flying moments of the last scene. Six years ago the seniors in the swelling group, escaping from the thunder of traffic in Victoria Street and Broad Sanctuary, had entered the silent backwater of Little Dean's Yard as Minor Candidates; their parents or the masters of their preparatory schools