Title: The Garden Without Walls

Author: Coningsby Dawson

 BOOK I—THE WALLED-IN GARDEN

And God planted a garden and drove out man; and he placed at the east of Eden angels and the flame of a sword.

CHAPTER I—MY MOTHER

It happened about six in the morning, in a large red room. A bar of sunlight streamed in at the window, in which dust-motes were dancing by the thousand. A man and woman were lying in bed; I was standing up in my cot, plucking at the woman with my podgy fingers. She stirred, turned, rubbed her eyes, smiled, stretched out her arms, and drew me under the bed-clothes beside her. The man slept on.

This is my earliest recollection. If it be true that the soul is born not at the same time as the body, but at a later period with the first glimmering of memory, then this was the morning on which my soul groped its way into the world.