One went
with an intent rush across the market square, one took one's exercise
with as dramatic a sense of an ordered day as an Oxford don, one burnt
the midnight oil quite consciously at the rare respectful, benighted
passer-by. And one stood out finely in the local paper with one's
unapproachable yearly harvest of certificates. Thus I was not only a
genuinely keen student, but also a little of a prig and poseur in those
days--and the latter kept the former at it, as London made clear.
Moreover Wimblehurst had given me no outlet in any other direction.
But I did not realise all this when I came to London, did not perceive
how the change of atmosphere began at once to warp and distribute my
energies. In the first place I became invisible. If I idled for a day,
no one except my fellow-students (who evidently had no awe for me)
remarked it. No one saw my midnight taper; no one pointed me out as I
crossed the street as an astonishing intellectual phenomenon. In the
next place I became inconsiderable. In Wimblehurst I felt I stood for
Science; nobody there seemed to have so much as I and to have it so
fully and completely.
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