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“We are none of us infallible,” says a certain gentle cynic, “not even the youngest,” and I am not minded to impair the validity of this narrative by an attempt to prove that there were no weak spots in the armour of my bachelor philosophy. I am only a man. It is better than being a woman, but it does not put one on a par with the Delphic oracle. I have reserved my reference to these weaknesses until now, but with no intention of disguising or evading them.

No bird ever wove a nest so cunningly, or of materials so uniformly soft, that there was nowhere a stick or straw which came into uneasy contact with its tender ribs; and, carefully planned and sedulously supervised as had been the details of my life at “Sans