And so on, all the
way through. It is very easy to adjust the play to any desired language.
Anybody can do it.
MY BOYHOOD DREAMS
The dreams of my boyhood? No, they have not been realised. For all who
are old, there is something infinitely pathetic about the subject which
you have chosen, for in no greyhead's case can it suggest any but one
thing--disappointment. Disappointment is its own reason for its pain:
the quality or dignity of the hope that failed is a matter aside. The
dreamer's valuation of the thing lost--not another man's--is the only
standard to measure it by, and his grief for it makes it large and great
and fine, and is worthy of our reverence in all cases. We should
carefully remember that. There are sixteen hundred million people in the
world. Of these there is but a trifling number--in fact, only
thirty-eight millions--who can understand why a person should have an
ambition to belong to the French army; and why, belonging to it, he
should be proud of that; and why, having got down that far, he should
want to go on down, down, down till he struck the bottom and got on the
General Staff; and why, being stripped of this livery, or set free and
reinvested with his self-respect by any other quick and thorough process,
let it be what it might, he should wish to return to his strange serfage.
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