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4

But to the enthusiasm of the young, dreams have something of the
substance of reality and realities, something of the magic of
dreams. The London to which Benham came from Cambridge and the
disquisitions of Prothero was not the London of a mature and
disillusioned vision. It was London seen magnified and distorted
through the young man's crystalline intentions. It had for him a
quality of multitudinous, unquenchable activity. Himself filled
with an immense appetite for life, he was unable to conceive of
London as fatigued. He could not suspect these statesmen he now
began to meet and watch, of jaded wills and petty spites, he
imagined that all the important and influential persons in this
large world of affairs were as frank in their private lives and as
unembarrassed in their financial relationships as his untainted
self. And he had still to reckon with stupidity. He believed in
the statecraft of leader-writers and the sincerity of political
programmes. And so regarded, what an avenue to Empire was
Whitehall! How momentous was the sunrise in St.


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