It is courteous to respect a fellow-being's right to privacy by providing him with a room of his own; but it can be torture to make him feel that tha… - Howard Spring

Once I wandered away from my brothers and sisters and went into a near-by field, and right out in the middle of it I lay down in grass so high that no one could see me. The red sorrel from that angle rose like spires and the dog-daisies trembled against the blue with fantastic loveliness. The silence was so great that I could hear the grasses making a small commotion like the trees of a forest in which I was a beetle. I shut my eyes and tried to forget that I was anyone at all. I tried to imagine that I was a stone lying on the ground; and I remember snatching myself up from what must have been something near to unconsciousness and rushing away frightened.

On one of those occasions, for a variety of subjects, I had won three pounds worth of books. It was in the happy days when the volumes of the Everyman Library cost but a shilling apiece. Decorously the students walked up and received their books—one, two or three. But, with a lust for quantity, and to the devil with morocco bindings, I had staked out my claim on Everyman. On my first call, I was received with ironic cheers as I bore away a toppling pile of thirty volumes; and when, called later, I added another thirty to the store and walked back to my seat, chin firmly pressed into the topmost volume, there were roars of laughter. It was a business getting home those sixty volumes. I had taken the precaution to provide myself with plenty of string, and what is more I got on to a tram, a rare thing to do in those days.

Though blind chance took me to a newspaper office, I was happy there at once; and I have been happy in newspaper offices ever since.
It was clear from the first that the way up was through the reporters’ room; and the way to the reporters’ room in those days was by learning shorthand. It was a lucky thing for me that there was another boy in the office who shared my passion for learning shorthand. It is the easiest thing in the world to learn; but when we had learned the principles there came the question of practice.
We solved this by coming to the office at eight each morning. Our work began at nine, and for an hour before that time we harangued and declaimed to one another from a volume of Sir Edward Clarke’s speeches, borrowed from the office library.