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avoid looking at a bright red shawl. Nor can the smell be held responsible for the feeling of nausea, for the smell is not only rather pleasant than otherwise, but is so faint that only in the presence of large quantities of blood is it perceptible at all. I can only assume that the dislike of blood is really due to some sub-conscious association of blood with the ideas of suffering and death. And on the matter of death I shall expound my views later.
    Not only did I not share this popular aversion to blood, but, on the contrary, the sight of it held, for me, a fascination. And I only refer to this feeling for the reason that, I judge from observation, it is not generally shared. In the same way I should only need to mention the satisfaction afforded me by sight if all other persons were blind; and just as, in that case, I should regard the blind as abnormal and not myself, so I do not regard myself as a curiosity for differing from other people in this matter of blood.
    I have alluded to the frequent fights which took place after school hours; although not often an active participant, I was always in the forefront of the spectators. It was not so much the “sport” (i.e., exciting brutality) of these encounters which interested me as the prospect—usually fulfillled—of a blood-letting. When one of the antagonists had retired from the encounter with blood streaming from his nostrils, I would stand beside him on the kerb watching with satisfaction the rich red drops splashing into the gutter.
    One of the few school-mates who appeared to share my interest was a boy named Johnson whose father, as I soon discovered, kept a pork shop in the neighbourhood. It was one of those shops to which a poor person could repair with a basin for the purchase of hot boiled pork and pease-pudding. This latter delicacy now appears to be almost unprocurable, for shops of the class referred to have disappeared nowadays so far as my observation goes, and the secret of the pudding’s preparation with them—a secret held exclusively, I judge, by professional pork-butchers. At the shop of Johnson’s father one could also purchase hot saveloys and things called faggots, obscurely compounded comestibles of the rissole type.
    Dr. Styles, who occasionally manifested flashes of allusive humour, sometimes addressed the boy Johnson as “doctor.” At this witticism we would all dutifully laugh, but our merriment was akin to that of the courtier at the jests of a touchy potentate behind whose throne lurk the shadows of the boiling-vat and the gibbet. We had but the vaguest notion as to who the historical Dr. Johnson had been, though the boy Johnson supposed him to have been a friend of Shakespeare who used to get drunk at the Cock Tavern—wherever that was.
    Johnson showed a marked friendliness towards me, and as my way home from school led past his father’s shop, he would occasionally draw me inside, where his jolly-looking, red-faced father would dig a tit-bit from one of the steaming trays over which he presided and offer it to me on a slip of newspaper. Had my mother ever met me returning home munching a piece of faggot or sucking a dob of pease-pudding from a paper, I know she would have been horrified at my “low” behavior; but she never did and I enjoyed these illicit snacks in peace.
    One day Johnson approached me in the playground. “I say, Carnac,” he said; “like to come to tea at my place this afternoon? My father’s killing a pig this evening. Ever seen a pig killed?”
    â€œNo,” I replied, with interest.
    â€œIt’s rare fun. You should hear it squeal. Don’t they bleed too! Like to come along?”
    â€œI’ll ask at dinner-time if I may,” I told him; for this was during morning play.
    When I returned home I put the matter to my mother, who was just bringing in the dinner. “Mother, can I go to tea with Johnson after school?”
    â€œWho