I suppose that every one has made the acquaintance of the subject of this little biography at some time or other, though to others he may not have appeared as he has appeared to me, and, as I know, he has been called by many names.  Indeed, when I consider that there have been men and women who have sought his society with a passionate eagerness, it is clear to me that his disguises must be extremely subtle, and that he employs them with a just regard for the personalities of his companions.  For while some have found in his society the ultimate splendour of life, for me he has always been wearisome and ridiculously mean.

Of course it may be that I have known him too long, for even as a child I was accustomed to find him at my side, an unwelcome guest who came and went by no law that p. 100my youthful mind could determine.  Certainly in those days he was more capricious, and the method of argument by repetition, which he still employs, was only too well calculated to weary and distress a child.  But for the rest, the Harold whom I knew then was materially the Harold whom I know now.  Conceive a small man so severely afflicted with St. Vitus’s dance that his features are hardly definable, endow him with a fondness for clothes of dull colours grievously decorated with spots, and a habit of asking meaningless questions over and over again in an utterly unemotional voice, and you will be able to form a not unfair estimate of the joys of Harold’s society.  There have been exceptions, however, to the detestable colourlessness of Harold’s appearance.  I have seen him on occasion dressed in flaming red, like Mephistopheles, and his shrill staccato voice has pierced my head like a corkscrew.  But these manifestations have always been brief, and might even be considered enjoyable when compared with the unrestful monotony of Harold’s society in general.

p. 101Who taught me to call him by the name of Harold I do not know, but in my youthful days the man’s character was oddly associated with the idea of virtue as expounded in the books I read on Sunday afternoons.  That I hated him was, I felt, merely a fitting attribute in one whose instincts were admittedly bad, but I did not allow the consideration to affect my rejoicings when I escaped from his company.  Curiously, too, I perceived that the Olympians were with me in this, and since the moral soundness of those improving books was beyond question, I had grave doubts as to their ultimate welfare.  But it was always an easy task to detect the Olympians tripping in their own moralities; they had so many.

As time went on, and I grew out of the Sunday books and all............