The History of Mr. Polly

eatures fine, but a trifle too pointed about the nose to be classically perfect. The corners of his sensitive mouth were depressed. His eyes were ruddy brown and troubled, a

. His brow had the little puckerings of a thoroughly discontented man, little wrinklings and lumps, particularly over his rig

ing song. "Ro-o-o-tten

he rest of his discourse was marred

rs, technically a "wing-poke"; that and his tie, which was new and loose and rich in colouring, had been selected to encourage and stimulate customers - for he dealt in gentlemen's

as not simply indigest

d not blind him for ever to the fact that the little shop in the High Street was not paying. An absence of returns, a constriction of credit, a depleted till, the most valiant resolves to keep smiling, could not prevail for ever against these insistent phenomena. One might bustle about in the morning before dinner, and in the afternoon afte

Mr. Polly from the cradle t

mewling and puking

dda, had washed him in the utmost detail, and wrapped him up in soft, warm blankets, and smothered him with kisses. A regal time that was, and four and thirty years ago; and a merciful forgetfulness barred Mr. Polly from ever bringing its careless luxury, its autocratic demands and instant obedience, into contrast with his present condition of life. These two people had worshipped him from the

died when h

memories of himself in the time wh

armth of a summer dawn, and all the painting was marvellously bright as if with the youth and hope of the delicately beautiful children in the foreground. She was telling them, one felt, of the great prospect of life that opened before them, of the spectacle of the world, the splendours of sea and mountain they might travel and see, the joys of skill they might acquire, of effort and the pride of effort and the devotions and nobilities it was theirs to achieve. Perhaps

entire disregard of punctuation or significance, and caused to imitate writing copies and drawing copies, and given object lessons upon sealing wax and silk-worms and potato bugs and ginger and iron and such like things, and taught various other subjects his mind refused to entertain, and afterwards, when he was about twelve, he was jerked by his parent to "finish off

Mr. Polly had lost much of his natural confidence, so far as figures and sciences and languages and the possibilities of learning things were concerned. He thought of the present world no longer as a wonderland of experiences, but as geography and history, as the repeating of names that were hard to pronounce, and lists of products and populations and heights and lengths, and as lists and dates - oh! and boredom indescribable. He thought of religion as the recital of more or less incomprehensible words that were hard to remember, and of the Divinity as of a limitless Being having the nature of a schoolmaster and making infinite rules, known and unknown rules, that were always ruthlessly enfo

were also adventurous. He got these chiefly from the local institute, and he also "took in," irregularly but thoroughly, one of those inspiring weeklies that dull people used to call "penny dreadfuls," admirable weeklies crammed with imagination that the cheap boys' "comics" of to-day have replaced. At fourteen, when he emerged from the valley of the shadow of education, there survived something, indeed it survived still, obscured and thwarted, at five and thirty, that pointed - not with a visible and prevailing finger like the

d stare up at the stars, and afterwards find it

nquering and adored white man into the swarming villages of Central Africa. He shot bears with a revolver - a cigarette in the other hand - and made a necklace of

o be a diver and go down into the

ts, and died on the ramparts at the moment of vic

orpedoed ships,

aric lands, and reconciled whole

utifully - but only once or twice after the Revi

nd, newly exposed by the fall o

tting somewhat slackly on the form and projecting himself in a manner tempt

e. He hated writing; the ink always crept up his fingers and the smell of ink offended him. And he was filled with unexpressed doubts. Why should writi

form of commercial documents. "Dear Sir," they ran, "Referring to y

tween his fourteenth and fifteenth birthday. His father - who had long since forgotten the time when his son's little limbs seemed

atted boy did some

s that led him at last to the sole proprietorship of a bankrup