What? Have you not received powers, to the limits of which you will bear all that befalls? Have you not received magnanimity? Have you not received courage? Have you not received endurance?— EPICTETUS...

When I began this book I feared that its merit would depend upon how faithfully I could record my own impressions of people and events: when I had finished it I was certain of it. Had it been any other kind of book the judgment of those nearest me would have been invaluable, but, being what it is, it had to be entirely my own; since whoever writes as he speaks must take the whole responsibility, and to ask "Do you think I may say this?" or "write that?" is to shift a little of that responsibilit

"Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid wooed by incapacity."—Blake....

I was born in the country of Hogg and Scott between the Yarrow and the Tweed, in the year 1864. I am one of twelve children, but I only knew eight, as the others died when I was young. My eldest sister Pauline—or Posie, as we called her—was born in 1855 and married on my tenth birthday one of the best of men, Thomas Gordon Duff. [Footnote: Thomas Gordon Duff, of Drummuir Castle, Keith.] She died of tuberculosis, the cruel disease by which my family have all been pursued. We were too different in

My home, Glen, is on the border of Peeblesshire and Selkirkshire, sixteen miles from Abbotsford and thirty from Edinburgh. It was designed on the lines of Glamis and Castle Fraser, in what is called Scottish baronial style. I well remember the first shock I had when some one said: "I hate turrets and tin men on the top of them!" It unsettled me for days. I had never imagined that anything could be more beautiful than Glen. The classical style of Whittingehame—and other fine places of the sort—ap

After Laura's death I spent most of my time in the East End of London. One day, when I was walking in the slums of Whitechapel, I saw a large factory and girls of all ages pouring in and out of it. Seeing the name "Cliffords" on the door, I walked in and asked a workman to show me his employer's private room. He indicated with his finger where it was and I knocked and went in. Mr. Cliffords, the owner of the factory, had a large red face and was sitting in a bare, squalid room, on a hard chair,

Although I did not do much thinking over my education, others did it for me. I had been well grounded by a series of short-stayed governesses in the Druids and woad, in Alfred and the cakes, Romulus and Remus and Bruce and the spider. I could speak French well and German a little; and I knew a great deal of every kind of literature from Tristram Shandy and The Antiquary to Under Two Flags and The Grammarian's Funeral; but the governesses had been failures and, when Lucy married, my mother decide

Frau von Mach kept a ginger-coloured lodging-house high up in Luttichau-strasse. She was a woman of culture and refinement; her mother had been English and her husband, having gone mad in the Franco-Prussian war, had left her penniless with three children. She had to work for her living and she cooked and scrubbed without a thought for herself from dawn till dark. There were thirteen pianos on our floor and two or three permanent lodgers. The rest of the people came and went—men, women and boys

When I first came out in London we had no friends of fashion to get me invitations to balls and parties. The Walters, who were my mother's rich relations, in consequence of a family quarrel were not on speaking terms with us; and my prospects looked by no means rosy. One day I was lunching with an American to whom I had been introduced in the hunting-field and found myself sitting next to a stranger. Hearing that he was Arthur Walter, I thought that it would be fun to find out his views upon my

The political event that caused the greatest sensation when I was a girl was the murder of Mr. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish on May 6, 1882. We were in London at the time; and the news came through on a Sunday. Alfred Lyttelton told me that Lady Frederick Cavendish's butler had broken it to her by rushing into the room saying: "They have knifed his lordship!" The news spread from West to East and North to South; groups of people stood talking in the middle of the streets without their hats

The next Prime Minister, whom I knew better than either Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury, was Lord Rosebery. When I was a little girl, my mother took us to stay at Thomas's Hotel, Berkeley Square, to have a course of dancing lessons from the fashionable and famous M. d'Egville. These lessons put me in high spirits, because my master told me I could always make a living on the stage. His remarks were justified by a higher authority ten years later: the beautiful Kate Vaughan of the Gaiety Theatre.

5. Verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. 6. Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them. 7. And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee....

THE SOULS—LORD CURZON's POEM AND DINNER PARTY AND WHO WERE THERE —MARGOT'S INVENTORY OF THE GROUP—TILT WITH THE LATE LADY LONDONDERRY—VISIT TO TENNYSON; HIS CONTEMPT FOR CRITICS; HIS HABIT OF LIVING—J. K. S. NOT A SOUL—MARGOT'S FRIENDSHIP WITH JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS; HIS PRAISE OF MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF No one ever knew how it came about that I and my particular friends were called "the Souls." The origin of our grouping together I have already explained: we saw more of one another than we should pr

I shall open this chapter of my autobiography with a character- sketch of myself, written at Glen in one of our pencil-games in January, 1888. Nearly every one in the room guessed that I was the subject, but opinions differed as to the authorship. Some thought that our dear and clever friend, Godfrey Webb, had written it as a sort of joke. "In appearance she was small, with rapid, nervous movements; energetic, never wholly ungraceful, but inclined to be restless. Her face did not betray the inte

My friendship with Lord and Lady Manners, [Footnote: Avon Tyrrell, Christchurch, Hants. Lady Manners was a Miss Fane.] of Avon Tyrrell, probably made more difference to the course of my life than anything that had happened in it. Riding was what I knew and cared most about; and I dreamt of High Leicestershire. I had hunted in Cheshire, where you killed three foxes a day and found yourself either clattering among cottages and clothes-lines, or blocked by carriages and crowds; I knew the stiff plo

The first time I ever saw Peter Flower was at Ranelagh, where he had taken my sister Charty Ribblesdale to watch a polo-match. They were sitting together at an iron table, under a cedar tree, eating ices. I was wearing a grey muslin dress with a black sash and a black hat, with coral beads round my throat, and heard him say as I came up to them: "Nineteen? Not possible! I should have said fifteen! Is that the one that rides so well?" After shaking hands I sat down and looked about me. I always n

THE ASQUITH FAMILY TREE—HERBERT H. ASQUITH's MOTHER—ASQUITH'S FIRST MARRIAGE; MEETS MARGOT TENNANT FOR FIRST TIME—TALK TILL DAWN ON HOUSE OF COMMONS' TERRACE; OTHER MEETINGS—ENGAGEMENT A LONDON SENSATION—MARRIAGE AN EVENT My husband's father was Joseph Dixon Asquith, a cloth-merchant, in Morley, at that time a small town outside Leeds. He was a man of high character who held Bible classes for young men. He married a daughter of William Willans, of Huddersfield, who sprang of an old Yorkshire Pur

I do not think if you had ransacked the world you could have found natures so opposite in temper, temperament and outlook as myself and my stepchildren when I first knew them. If there was a difference between the Tennants and Lytteltons of laughter, there was a difference between the Tennants and Asquiths of tears. Tennants believed in appealing to the hearts of men, firing their imagination and penetrating and vivifying their inmost lives. They had a little loose love to give the whole world.

My husband was Home Secretary when we married, and took a serious interest in our prison system, which he found far from satisfactory. He thought that it would be a good thing, before we were known by sight, to pay a surprise visit to the convict— prisons and that, if I could see the women convicts and he could see the men privately, he would be able to examine the conditions under which they served their sentences better than if we were to go officially. I was expecting my baby in about three m

Sir John Williams [Footnote: Sir John Williams, of Aberystwyth, Wales.] was my doctor and would have been a remarkable man in any country, but in Wales he was unique. He was a man of heart without hysteria and both loyal and truthful. On the 18th of May, 1895, my sisters Charlotte and Lucy were sitting with me in my bedroom. I will quote from my diary the account of my first confinement and how I got to know him: "I began to feel ill. My Gamp, an angular-faced, admirable old woman called Jerusha

I will finish with a character-sketch of myself copied out of my diary, written nine weeks before the birth of my fifth and last baby in 1906, and like everything else that I have quoted never intended for the public eye: "I am not pretty, and I do not know anything about my expression, although I observe it is this that is particularly dwelt upon if one is sufficiently plain; but I hope, when you feel as kindly towards your fellow-creatures as I do, that some of that warmth may modify an otherw