It was during convalescence that it occurred to me
I was nearing thirty, and that if I meant to live in America
all my life, it was time to become naturalized. And this
thought caused me to reflect on the question of going
home. My sister, with her children, passed through New
York about this time, returning from South Australia,
where her husband was Governor, and it was at dinner in
my employer's house, where he had invited them, that the
longing to return to England suddenly declared itself.
To find myself among relatives who called me by the
unfamiliar childhood name, woke English memories,
English values, and brought back the English atmosphere
once more. My mother was still alive.... I remember
that dinner well. My sister brought a tame little Mexican
monkey with her. A man, also, called to ask Mr. Speyer
for help, and when I went to interview him in the hall,
his long story included a reference to something Mr.
Dodge, he declared, had done for him. "Mr. Dodge
gave me this," he said, and promptly scooped one eye out
of its socket and showed it to me lying in the palm of his
hand. The glass eye, the monkey, remain associated in
my mind still with the rather poignant memories of
forgotten English days my sister's visit stirred to life, and
with my own emotions as I reflected upon the idea of going
home at last. A chance meeting, again, worked its
spell.
I had felt that half a universe separated me from the world in which my relatives lived, but after they had gone I began to realize various things I had not appreciated before. New York, I saw, could furnish no true abiding city for my soul which, though vagabond, yet sought something more than its appalling efficiency could ever give. What did I miss? I could name it now, but I hardly named it then perhaps. I was always hungry there, but with a hunger not of the body merely. The hunger, however, was real, often it was devastating. With such a lop-sided development as mine had been, my immaturity, no doubt, was still glaring. The sense of
failure, I know, at any rate, was very strong. My relatives
