not find.  Sometimes in those days, I will make bold to confess, I read a book, or heard an address or sermon, or talked to some interesting and attractive person, and felt suddenly that I was on the track of it; was it something I wanted, or was it something I had lost?  I could not tell!  But I knew that if I could find it, I should never be in any doubt again how to act or what to choose.  It was not a set of rules I wanted—­there were rules enough and to spare, some of them made for us, and many which we made for ourselves.  We mapped out every part of life which was left unmapped by the dons, and we knew exactly what was correct and what was not; and oh, how dull much of it was!

But I wanted a motive of some sort, an aim; I wanted to know what I was out for, as we now say.  I did not see what the point of much of my work was, or know what my profession was to be; I did not see why I did, for social reasons, so many things which did not interest me, or why I pretended to think them interesting.  I would sit, one of half-a-dozen men, the air dim with smoke, telling stories about other people.  A—­ had had a row with B—­, he would not go properly into training; he had lunched before a match off a tumbler of sherry and a cigar; he was too good to be turned out of the team—­it was amusing enough, but it certainly was not what I was looking for.

Then one made friends; it dawned upon one suddenly what a charming person C——­ was, so original and amusing, so observant; it became a thrilling thing to meet him in the court; one asked him to tea, one talked and told him everything.  A week later, one seemed to have got to the end of it; the path came to a stop; there was not much in it after all, and presently he was rather an ass; he looked gloomily at one when one met him, but one was off on another chase; this idealising of people was rather a mistake; the pleasure was in the exploration, and there was very little to explore; it was better to have a comfortable set of friends with no nonsense; and yet that was dull too.  That was certainly not the thing one was in search of.

What was it, then?  One saw it like a cloud-shadow racing over the hill, like a bird upon the wing.  The perfect friend could not help one, for his perfections waned and faded.  Yet there was certainly something there, singing like a bird in the wood; only when one reached the tree the bird was gone, and another song was in the air.  It seemed, then, at first sight as if one was in search of an emotion of some kind, and not only a solitary emotion, like that which touched the spirit at the sudden falling of the ripe rose-petals from their stem, or at the sight of the far-off plain, with all its woods and waters framed between the outrunning hills, or at the sound of organ-music stealing out of the soaring climbing woodwork with all its golden pipes, on setting foot in the dim and fragrant church; they were all sweet enough, but the mind turned to some kindred soul at hand with whom it could all be shared; and the recognition of some other presence, visibly beckoning through gesture and form and smiling wide-opened eyes, that seemed the best that could be attained, that nearness and rapture of welcome; and then the moment passed, and that too ebbed away.