/0/14229/coverbig.jpg?v=0e6e1bedef8d7cd348f44d8e78a754bb)
Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge by Arthur Christopher Benson
He was born November 2, 1852. He was the second son of a retired cavalry officer, who lived in Hampshire. Besides his elder brother, there were three sisters, one of whom died. His father was a wealthy man, and had built himself a small country house, and planted the few acres of ground round it very skillfully. Major Hamilton was a very religious man, of the self-sufficient, puritanical, and evangelical type, that issues from discipline; a martinet in his regiment, a domestic tyrant, without intending to be.
He did not marry till rather late in life; and at the time when Arthur was growing up-the time when memory intwines itself most lingeringly with its surroundings, the time which comes back to us at ecstatic moments in later, sadder days-all the entourage of the place was at its loveliest. Nothing ever equalled the thrill, he has told me, of finding the first thrush's nest in the laurels by the gate, or of catching the first smell of the lilac bushes in spring, or the pungent scent of the chamomile and wild celery down by the little stream.
The boy acquired a great love for Nature, though not of the intimate kind that poets have by instinct. "In moments of grief and despair," he wrote in later life, "I do not, as some do, crouch back to the bosom of the great Mother; she has, it seems, no heart for me when I am sorry, though she smiles with me when I am glad." But he has told me that he is able to enjoy a simple village scene in a way that others can not easily understand: a chestnut crowded with pink spires, the clack of a mill-wheel, the gush of a green sluice out of a mantled pool, a little stream surrounded by flags and water lobelias, gave him all his life a keen satisfaction in his happy moments. "I always gravitate to water," he writes. "I could stop and look at a little wayside stream for hours; and a pool-I never tire of it, though it awes me when I am alone."
The boy was afraid of trees, as many children are. If he had to go out alone he always crossed the fields, and never went by the wood; wandering in a wood at night was a childish nightmare of a peculiarly horrible kind.
I quote a few childish stories about him, selecting them out of a large number.
His mother saying to him one day that the gardener was dead, he burst out laughing (with that curious hysteria so common in children), and then after a little asked if they were going to bury him.
His mother, wishing to familiarize him with the idea of continued existence after death, dwelt on the fact that it was only his body that was going to be buried: his soul was in heaven.
The boy said presently, "If his body is in the churchyard, and his soul in heaven, where is David?"
Upon which his mother sent him down to the farm.
He was often singularly old-fashioned in his ways. If he was kept indoors by a childish ailment, he would draw his chair up to the fire, by his nurse, and say, "Now that the children are gone out, nurse, we can have a quiet talk." And he always returned first of all his brothers and sisters, if they were playing in the garden, that he might have the pleasure of clapping his hands from the nursery window to summon them in. "Children, children, come in," he used to say.
A curious little dialogue is preserved by his aunt in a diary. He laughed so immoderately at something that was said at lunch by one of his elders, that when his father inquired what the joke was, he was unable to answer. "It must be something very funny," said his mother in explanation. "Arthur never laughs unless there is a joke." The little boy became grave at once, and said severely, "There's hardly ever anything to laugh at in what you say; but I always laugh for fear people should be disappointed."
He was very sensitive to rebuke. "I am not so sensitive as I am always supposed to be," he said to me once. "I am one of those people who cry when they are spoken to, and do it again."
For instance, he told me that, being very fond of music when he was small, he stole down one morning at six to play the piano. His father, a very early riser, was disturbed by the gentle tinkling, and coming out of his study, asked him rather sharply why he couldn't do something useful-read some Shakespeare. He never played on the piano again for months, and for years never until he had ascertained that his father was out. "It was a mistake," he told me once, apropos of it. "If he had said that it disturbed him, but that I might do it later, I should have been delighted to stop. I always liked feeling that I was obliging people."
He disliked his father, and feared him. The tall, handsome gentleman, accustomed to be obeyed, in reality passionately fond of his children, dismayed him. He once wrote on a piece of paper the words, "I hate papa," and buried it in the garden.
For the rest, he was an ordinary, rather clever, secretive child, speaking very little of his feelings, and caring, as he has told me since, very little for anybody except his nurse. "I cared about her in a curious way. I enjoyed the sensation of crying over imaginary evils; and I should not like to say how often in bed at night I used to act over in my mind an imaginary death-bed scene of my nurse, and the pathetic remarks she was to make about Master Arthur, and the edifying bearing I was to show. This was calculated within a given time to produce tears, and then I was content."
He went to a private school, which he hated, and then to Winchester, which he grew to love. The interesting earnest little boy merged into the clumsy loose-jointed schoolboy, silent and languid. There are hardly any records of this time.
"My younger sister died," he told me, "when I was at school. I experienced about ten minutes of grief; my parents were overwhelmed with anguish, and I can remember that, like a quick, rather clever child, I soon came to comprehend the sort of remark that cheered them, and almost overdid it in my zeal. I am overwhelmed with shame," he said, "whenever I look at my mother's letters about that time when she speaks of the comfort I was to them. It was a fraus pia, but it was a most downright fraus."
I think I may relate one other curious incident among his public school experiences: it may seem very incredible, but I have his word for it that it is true.
"A sixth-form boy took a fancy to me, and let me sit in his room, and helped me in my work. The night before he left the school I was sitting there, and just before I went away, being rather overcome with regretful sentiments, he caught hold of me by the arm and said, among other things, 'And now that I am going away, and shall probably never see you again, I don't believe you care one bit.' I don't know how I came to do it," he said, "because I was never demonstrative; but I bent down and kissed him on the cheek, and then blushed up to my ears. He let me go at once; he was very much astonished, and I think not a little pleased; but it was certainly a curious incident."
During this time his intellectual development was proceeding slowly. "I went through three phases," he said. "I began by a curious love for pastoral and descriptive poetry. I read Thomson and Cowper, similes from 'Paradise Lost,' and other selections of my own; I read Tennyson, and revelled in the music of the lines and words. I intended to be a poet.
"Then I became omnivorous, and read everything, whether I understood it or not, especially biographies. I spent all my spare time in the school library; one only valuable thing have I derived from that-a capacity for taking in the sense of a page at a glance, and having a verbal memory of a skimmed book for an hour or two superior to any one that I ever met."
Then there came an ebb, and he read nothing, but loafed all day, and tried to talk. He had a notion he said, that he could argue Socratically; and he was always trying to introduce metaphors into his conversation. But his remarks in a much later letter to a friend on childish reading are so pertinent that I introduce them here.
"Never take a book away from a child unless it is positively vicious; that they should learn how to read a book and read it quickly is the great point; that they should get a habit of reading, and feel a void without it, is what should be cultivated. Never mind if it is trash now; their tastes will insensibly alter. I like a boy to cram himself with novels; a day will come when he is sick of them, and rejects them for the study of facts. What we want to give a child is 'bookmindedness,' as some one calls it. They will read a good deal that is bad, of course; but innocence is as slippery as a duck's back; a boy really fond of reading is generally pure-minded enough. When you see a robust, active, out-of-door boy deeply engrossed in a book, then you may suspect it if you like, and ask him what he has got; it will probably have an animal bearing."
Friendships more or less ardent, butterfly-hunting, school games, constant visits to the cathedral for service, to which he was always keenly devoted, uneventful holidays, filled up most of his school life. His letters at this date are very ordinary; his early precocity seemed, rather to the delight of his parents, to have vanished. He was not a prig, though rather exclusive; not ungenial, though retiring. "A dreadful boy," he writes of himself, "who is as mum as a mouse with his elders, and then makes his school friends roar with laughter in the passage: dumb at home, a chatterbox at school."
"I had no religion at that time," he writes, "with the exception of six months, when I got interested in it by forming a friendship with an attractive ritualistic curate; but my confirmation made no impression on me, and I think I had no moral feelings that I could distinguish. I had no inherent hatred of wrong, or love for right; but I was fastidious, and that kept me from being riotous, and undemonstrative, which made me pure."
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
"What are those wretched little flowers?" said Mr. Redmayne, pointing at them contemptuously. "Oh, don't say that," said Howard; "they are always the first to struggle up, and they are the earliest signs of spring. Those are aconites." "Aconites? Deadly poison " said Mr. Redmayne, in a tone of horror. "Well, I don't object to them, -- though I must say that I prefer the works of man to the works of God at all times and in all places. I don't like the spring -- it's a languid and treacherous time; it always makes me feel that I wish I were doing something else."
A.C. Benson was a popular British essayist and poet in the late 19th century, and many of his works continue to be read today.
A.C. Benson was a popular British essayist and poet in the late 19th century, and many of his works continue to be read today.
Lindsey's fiancé was the devil's first son. Not only did he lie to her but he also slept with her stepmother, conspired to take away her family fortune, and then set her up to have sex with a total stranger. To get her lick back, Lindsey decided to find a man to disrupt her engagement party and humiliate the cheating bastard. Never did she imagine that she would bump into a strikingly handsome stranger who was all that she was currently looking for. At the engagement party, he boldly declared that she was his woman. Lindsey thought he was just a broke man who wanted to leech off her. But once they began their fake relationship, she realized that good luck kept coming her way. She thought they would part ways after the engagement party, but this man kept to her side. "We gotta stick together, Lindsey. Remember, I'm now your fiancé. " "Domenic, you're with me because of my money, aren't you?" Lindsey asked, narrowing her eyes at him. Domenic was taken aback by that accusation. How could he, the heir of the Walsh family and CEO of Vitality Group, be with her for money? He controlled more than half of the city's economy. Money wasn't a problem for him! The two got closer and closer. One day, Lindsey finally realized that Domenic was actually the stranger she had slept with months ago. Would this realization change things between them? For the better or worse?
Rachel used to think that her devotion would win Brian over one day, but she was proven wrong when his true love returned. Rachel had endured it all—from standing alone at the altar to dragging herself to the hospital for an emergency treatment. Everyone thought she was crazy to give up so much of herself for someone who didn’t return her feelings. But when Brian received news of Rachel’s terminal illness and realized she didn’t have long to live, he completely broke down. "I forbid you to die!" Rachel just smiled. She no longer needed him. "I will finally be free."
I'm a Luna. After three years of marriage to Alpha Nathaniel Blackwood, I'm finally pregnant with his pup. But he's unclaimed me for his first love. I'm leaving the pack with this secret, praying he never finds out. Nathaniel Blackwood is a handsome, powerful Alpha. In a world where humans and werewolves coexist, he has it all: a billion-dollar empire, untold power, a massive pack, and, most importantly, the perfect Luna. But the return of his first love shattered our marriage. When he finds out the secret I've been hiding, will he regret rejecting me? Will I ever be able to forgive him? Dive into this gripping serialized novel to find out more-Enjoy the ride!
Three years ago, Cecilia was left battered and alone by the man she loved most, Alston, yet she bravely completed the wedding ceremony while pregnant. Three years later, although they were married, they grew apart over time. Cecilia focused on her career, no longer foolishly believing in love. But her transformation instantly threw Alston into a panic... And what is the secret from 11 years ago that Cecilia has always been reluctant to reveal? *** "She went to a law firm, met with a lawyer..." A lawyer? Is Cecilia suing someone? Who? Is there any recent litigation against the company? Alston suddenly chuckled coldly, "Who could she sue? I'm the CEO of this company. How come such a matter doesn't come to me first?" The assistant swallowed nervously, speaking softly, "Sir, there's no litigation against the company. She met with... a divorce lawyer."
"You're a creepy bastard." His eyes smolder me and his answering grin is nothing short of beautiful. Deadly. "Yet you hunger for me. Tell me, this appetite of yours, does it always tend toward 'creepy bastards'?" **** Widower and ex-boss to the Mafia, Zefiro Della Rocca, has an unhealthy fixation on the woman nextdoor. It began as a coincidence, growing into mere curiosity, and soon, it was an itch he couldn't ignore, like a quick fix of crack for an addict. He didn't know her name, but he knew every inch of her skin, how it flushed when she climaxed, her favourite novel and that every night she contemplated suicide. He didn't want to care, despising his rapt fascination of the woman. She was in love with her abusive husband. She was married, bound by a contract to the Bratva's hitman. She was off-limits. But when Zefiro wanted something, it was with an intensity that bordered on madness. He obsessed, possessed, owned. There'd be bloodshed if he touched her, but the sight of blood always did fascinate him. * When Susanna flees from her husband, she stumbles right into the arms of her devilishly handsome neighbour with a brooding glare. He couldn't stand her, but she needed him, if she was ever going to escape her husband who now wanted her dead. Better the devil you know than the angel you don't. She should have recalled that before hopping into Zefiro's car and letting him whisk her away to Italy. Maybe then, she wouldn't have started an affair with him. He was the only man who touched her right, and the crazy man took no small pains in ensuring he would be the last.
Iris grew from an orphaned child to the adopted daughter of the Stewart family at age ten, finding warmth in her nominal uncle Vincent's kindness. Seven years later, she became his secret lover. When Vincent's engagement was announced, gossip spread about the notorious playboy CEO finally settling down. But only Iris knew the extent of his cold, two-faced nature. Iris fell for Vincent and, through tears, begged, "Marry me," only to be met with his frosty refusal. Defeated, she accepted a lawyer's proposal, sparking public excitement. Then, on her wedding day, Vincent pleaded desperately, "Don't marry him…"