the wall-papers were bold and gigantic in pattern and much

variegated by damp and ill-mended rents.

As my father was quite unable to let more than one of these houses

at a time, and that for the most part to eccentric and undesirable

tenants, hethought it politic to live in one of the two others, and

devote the rent he received from the let one, when it was let, to

the incessant necessary repairing of all three. He also did some of

the repairinghimself and, smoking a bull-dog pipe the while, which

my mother would not allow him to do in the house, he cultivated

vegetables in a sketchy, unpunctual and not always successful manner

in the unoccupied gardens. The three houses faced north, and the

back of the one we occupied was covered by a grape-vine that

yielded, Iremember, small green grapes for pies in the spring, and

imperfectly ripe black grapes in favourable autumns for the purposes

of dessert. The grape-vine played an important part in my life, for

my father broke his neck while he was pruning it, when I was

thirteen.

My father was what is called a man of ideas, but they were not

alwaysgood ideas. My grandfather had been a private schoolmaster

and one of the founders of the College of Preceptors, and my father

had assisted him in his school until increasing competition and

diminishing attendance had made it evident that the days of small

private schools kept by unqualified persons were numbered.

Thereupon my father had rousedhimself and had qualified as a

science teacher under the Science and Art Department, which in these

days had charge of the scientific and artistic education of the mass

of the English population, and had thrownhimself into science

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