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He returned (after about a hundred years) to tell me that that evening I could sail from Liverpool; there was just one berth, second class, if that would suit.

There is no pummelling worse than that of a guilty conscience. I leave it to the reader to imagine, upon these lines, the pummelling of the ensuing days and these last, and horrific, pummellings on the coming alongside of the Doctor's launch, on the coming alongside of the pilot boat, on the coming aboard of the Customs men; on the descent of the gangway.

That, then, is how I left home.

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I find that others have felt, as I first felt on going West, "there is nothing here but the railway." The feeling is, of course, absurd. But it is very comprehensible. For mile after mile there is nothing to be seen but the wilderness. The sage-brush lands, after the East is past, roll everlastingly North and South.

I sat looking out at them, and instead of feeling more lonely and miserable, felt more at peace. For these spaces asked me as it were to live up to them, to put something in myself that they possessed. So, instead of the sage-brush lands depressing me, they made me adopt this outlook. I did not wish to weep for tangles and misunderstandings in the little isle back there across the Atlantic. The accepting mood was stronger. Very good; if that be Fate, let me bear it. It was only the mountains that depressed me.