Chapter 1 - Page 2

naturalist, a
virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in me, and was clearly
innate, as none of my sisters or brother ever had this taste.

One little event during this year has fixed itself very firmly in
my mind, and I hope that it has done so from my conscience having
been afterwards sorely troubled by it; it is curious as showing
that apparently I was interested at this early age in the
variability of plants! I told another little boy (I believe it
was Leighton, who afterwards became a well-known lichenologist
and botanist), that I could produce variously coloured
polyanthuses and primroses by watering them with certain coloured
fluids, which was of course a monstrous fable, and had never been
tried by me. I may here also confess that as a little boy I was
much given to inventing deliberate falsehoods, and this was
always done for the sake of causing excitement. For instance, I
once gathered much valuable fruit from my father's trees and hid
it in the shrubbery, and then ran in breathless haste to spread
the news that I had discovered a hoard of stolen fruit.

I must have been a very simple little fellow when I first went to
the school. A boy of the name of Garnett took me into a cake
shop one day, and bought some cakes for which he did not pay, as
the shopman trusted him. When we came out I asked him why he did
not pay for them, and he instantly answered, "Why, do you not
know that my uncle left a great sum of money to the town on
condition that every tradesman should give whatever was wanted
without payment to any one who wore his old hat and moved [it] in
a particular manner?" and he then showed me how it was moved. He
then went into another shop where he was trusted, and asked for
some small article, moving his hat in the proper manner, and of
course obtained it without payment. When we came out he said,
"Now if you like to go by yourself into that cake-shop (how well
I remember its exact position) I will lend you my hat, and you
can get whatever you like if you move the hat on your head
properly." I gladly accepted the generous offer, and went in and
asked for some cakes, moved the old hat and was walking out of
the shop, when the shopman made a rush at me, so I dropped the
cakes and ran for dear life, and was astonished by being greeted
with shouts of laughter by my false friend Garnett.

I can say in my own favour that I was as a boy humane, but I owed
this entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. I
doubt indeed whether humanity is a natural or innate quality. I
was very fond of collecting eggs, but I never took more than a
single egg out of a bird's nest, except on one single occasion,
when I took all, not for their value, but from a sort