Bishop Vincent, writing about boyhood, says, "If I were a boy? Ah, if I only were! The very thought of it sets my imagination afire. That 'if' is a key to dreamland. First I would want a thorough discipline, early begun and never relaxed, on the great truth of will force as the secret of character. I would want my teacher to put the weight of responsibility upon me; to make me think that I must furnish the materials and do the work of building my own character; to make me think that I am not a stick, or a stone, or a lump of putty, but a person. That what I am in the long run, is what I am to make myself."

Just out of hearing of the grasshopper warblers, there was a good-sized pool of water on the common, probably an old gravel-pit, its bottom now overgrown with rushes. A sedge warbler, the only one on the common, lived in the masses of bramble and gorse on its banks; and birds of so many kinds came to it to drink and bathe that the pool became a favourite spot with me. One evening, just before sunset, as I lingered near it, a pied wagtail darted out of some low scrub at my feet and fluttered, as if wounded, over the turf for a space of ten or twelve yards before flying away.