There stole into my mind Coleridge's poignant lines: Ah God! It is fell Christmas-tide So to the shops I hie; And my shopping-list, like the Albatros… - Robertson Davies

"All education is a struggle," said Marchbanks. "I had to struggle against schools and universities, of course, in order to get time to educate myself, which I did magnificently."

But what I knew then was that nobody — not even my mother — was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself on the surface.

We are approaching a millennium; the year 2000 draws on apace. The last time mankind had this experience a chaos comparable to our own was observable in many parts of the world; monsters and portents were reported from all quarters of the globe. We need not believe in these monsters and portents as actualities any more than we need believe the reports of flying saucers today; what is significant is that men yielded to an inner compulsion to fancy such things, and in this sense they were artistic creations rooted in fear much as are the pictures and images which we have been discussing.