Escape and other essays by A.C. Benson — Read

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It certainly seems, looking back to the early years, that I have altered very little -- hardly at all, in fact! The little thing, whatever it is, that sits at the heart of the machine, the speck of soul-stuff that is really ME, is very much the same creature, neither old nor young; confident, imperturbable, with a strange insouciance of its own, knowing what it has to do. I have done many things, gathered many impressions, ransacked experience, enjoyed, suffered; but whatever I have argued, expressed, tried to believe, aimed at, hoped, feared, has hardly affected that central core of life at all. And I feel as though that strange, dumb, cheerful self -- it is always cheerful, I think -- had played the part all along of a silent and not very critical spectator of all I have tried to be.