Bow were ringing in my ears. I saw myself a merchant prince, though
still young. Nobles crowded my counting house. I lent them millions
and married their daughters. I listened, unobserved in a corner, to
discussion on some new book. Immediately I was a famous author. All men
praised me: for of reviewers and their density I, in those days, knew
nothing. Poetry, fiction, history, I wrote them all; and all men read,
and wondered. Only here was a crumpled rose leaf in the pillow on which
I laid my swelling head: penmanship was vexation to me, and spelling
puzzled me, so that I wrote with sorrow and many blots and scratchings
out. Almost I put aside the idea of becoming an author.

But along whichever road I might fight my way to the Elysian Fields
of fame, education, I dimly but most certainly comprehended, was a
necessary weapon to my hand. And so, with aching heart and aching head,
I pored over my many books. I see myself now in my small bedroom, my
elbows planted on the shaky, one-legged table, startled every now and
again by the frizzling of my hair coming in contact with the solitary
candle. On cold nights I wear my overcoat, turned up about the neck, a
blanket round my legs, and often I must sit with my fingers in my ears,
the better to shut out the sounds of life, rising importunately from
below. "A song, Of a song, To a song, A song, O! song!" "I love, Thou
lovest, He she or it loves. I should or would love" over and over again,
till my own voice seems some strange buzzing thing about me, while
my head grows smaller and smaller till I put my hands up frightened,
wondering if it still be entire upon my shoulders.

Was I more stupid than the average, or is a boy's brain physically
incapable of the work our educational system demands of it?

"Latin and Greek" I hear repeating the suave tones of Doctor Florret,
echoing as ever the solemn croak of Correctness, "are useful as mental
gymnastics." My dear Doctor Florret and Co., cannot you, out of the vast
storehouse of really necessary knowledge, select apparatus better fitted
to strengthen and not overstrain the mental muscles of ten-to-fourteen?
You, gentle reader, with brain fully grown, trained by years of practice
to its subtlest uses, take me from your bookshelf, say, your Browning or
even your Shakespeare. Come, you know this language well. You have not
merely learned: it is your mother tongue. Construe for me this short
passage, these few verses: parse, analyse, r