school whoknew or cared a rap about the Indian Ocean, except as

water on the way to India. But Britten had come up through the Suez

Canal, and his ship had spoken a pilgrim ship on the way. It gave

him a startling quality of livingknowledge. From these pilgrims we

got to a comparative treatment of religions, and from that, by a

sudden plunge, to entirely sceptical and disrespectful confessions

concerning Gates' last outbreak of simple piety in School Assembly.

We became congenial intimates from that hour.

The discovery of Britten happened to me when we were both in the

Lower Fifth. Previously there had been a watertight compartment

between the books I read and thethoughts they begot on the one hand

and human intercourse on the other. Now Ireally began my higher

education, and aired and examined and developed in conversation the

doubts, the ideas, the interpretations that had beenforming in my

mind. As we were both day-boys with agood deal of control over our

time we organised walks and expeditions together, and my habit of

solitary and rather vague prowling gave way to much more definite

joint enterprises. I went several times to his house, he was the

youngest of several brothers, one of whom was a medical student and

let us assist at the dissection of a cat, and once or twice in

vacation time he came to Penge, and we went with parcels of

provisions to do a thorough day in the grounds and galleries of the

Crystal Palace, ending with the fireworks at close quarters. We

went in a river steamboat down to Greenwich, and fired by that made

an excursion to Margate and back; we explored London docks and

Bethnal Green Museum, Petticoat Lane and all sorts of out-of-the-way

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