title: Of Human Bondage
author:  W. Somerset Maugham 
description: &lt;DIV&gt;<b>W. Somerset Maugham</b> was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He afterwards walked the wards of St. Thomas's Hospital with a view to practice in medicine, but the success of his first novel, <b>Liza of Lambeth</b> (1897), won him over to letters. Something of his hospital experience is reflected, however, in the first of his masterpieces, <b>Of Human Bondage</b> (1915), and with <b>The Moon and Sixpence</b> (1919) his reputation as a novelist was assured.
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  # OF HUMAN BONDAGE
  
  
  ## W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER I
  
  
  
  
  
    
  THE day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there
  
  
  was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant
  
  
  came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the
  
  
  curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a
  
  
  stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  "Wake up, Philip," she said.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  She pulled down the bed-clothes, took him in her arms, and
  
  
  carried him downstairs. He was only half awake.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  "Your mother wants you," she said.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  She opened the door of a room on the floor below and took the
  
  
  child over to a bed in which a woman was lying. It was his
  
  
  mother. She stretched out her arms, and the child nestled by her
  
  
  side. He did not ask why he had been awakened. The woman kissed
  
  
  his eyes, and with thin, small hands felt the warm body through
  
  
  his white fla