The bare,
flat Bedfordshire fields had also their pleasures. I had an old
flint musket which I found in an outhouse. I loaded it with hard
peas, and once killed a sparrow. The fieldfares, or felts, as we
called them, were in flocks in winter, but with them I never
succeeded. On the dark November Wednesday and Saturday afternoons,
when there was not a breath of wind, and the fog hung heavily over
the brown, ploughed furrows, we gathered sticks, lighted a fire, and
roasted potatoes. They were sweet as peaches. After dark we would
"go a bat-fowling", with lanterns, some of us on one side of the
hedge and some on the other. I left school when I was between
fourteen and fifteen, and then came the great event and the great
blunder of my life, the mistake which well-nigh ruined it
altogether. My mother's brother had a son about five years older
than myself, who was being trained as an Independent minister. To
him I owe much. It was he who introduced me to Goethe. Some time
after he was ordained, he became heterodox, and was obliged to
separate himself from the Independents to whom he belonged. My
mother, as I have already said, was a little weak in her preference
for people who did not stand behind counters, and she desired
equality with her sister-in-law.
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