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[[underline]] Studies. [[/underline]]

I began to enjoy reading. Lost between the real and the unreal, I was unable to grapple with the decisions and problems of the moment. A book called: "At the Back of the North Wing", greatly impressed me. It was the adventures of a little boy who, belonging to a dimension were all nature is communicative, is visited by the North Wind which comes one night and carries him away altogether. While reading this book I lived in a dream. But a tragic awakening was to take place, and at the very moment of the arithmetic lesson. My mind refused to divide, add, or subtract. The clever elders, investigating the cause, put it down to the book which was then taken away from me. It could "be read only on Sundays". This was, indeed, an unhappy moment, for added to the pain of forced confiscation was the disappointment on matters of art. All flights of imagination, drawings of devils, ghosts, spirits, and other queer people, were strongly discouraged. Plaster models of cubes, blocks and pyramids must needs take their place. There had been promotion to more ambitious though equally dismal subjects, such as bibles, spectacles, and candlesticks. Finding no outlet for my imagination, I used to chalk on the blackboard, when I was alone, such ephemeral fancies as would relieve the tedium of the moment.