the scheme had become convincing and tangible although still most
hazy in detail.
A month later we parted in Paris, Miss Starr to go back to Italy, and
I to journey on to London to secure as many suggestions as possible
from those wonderful places of which we had heard, Toynbee Hall and
the People's Palace. So that it finally came about that in June, 1888,
five years after my first visit in East London, 1 found myself at Toynbee
Hall equipped not only with a letter of introduction from Canon Fremantle, hut with high expectations and a certain belief that whatever
perplexities and discouragement concerning the life of the poor were
in store for me, I should at least know something at first hand and have
the solace of daily activity. I had confidence that although life itself
might contain many difficulties, the period of mere passive receptivity
had come 10 an end, and I had at last finished with the everlasting
"preparation for life,'' however ill-prepared I might be.
It was not until years afterward that I came upon Tolstoy's phrase
"the snare of preparation," which he insists we spread before the feet
of young people, hopelessly entangling them in a curious inactivity at
the very period of life when they are longing to construct the world
anew and to conform it to their own ideals.