he days and the day dreams of glory! What games, what
picture-books, what mother-love, what gigantic Easter eggs, what armies
of tin and paper! And then, my soul, think of the first little trousers
and collars in which your mortal covering, so proud of its size, was
dressed; think how your father gave you rides on his knee, and your
grandfather lent you his long bamboo cane with a golden head to use as
a hobby horse.
Another glass! And then look on a few years. Do you remember the sad
morning when you were taken to see all the mournful solemnities of
grandfather's funeral? Ah! what would you not have given to get him
back. Peace, 'tis but for awhile that he slumbers. And then the
delightful hours in the old library filled with folios that were
evidently bound in leather for no other purpose than that of forming
huts to protect you and your imaginary sheep and cattle from the
imaginary rain. How roughly you treated the Higher Literature of your
native land. Why, I remember throwing a quarto Lessing at my brother's
head, for which he beat me unmercifully with 'Sophy's Journey from
Memel to Saxony.' Rise too, ye walls of the old castle, with your
half-ruined passage, your cellar, your gate, your courtyard, all of
which served only as a playground for a squad of boys; soldiers and
robbers, nomads and caravans we were. I didn't much care whether I
represented Platoff or a Cossack trooper, Napoleon or Napoleon's
charger. Scattered all over the world, in every rank of life, and the
sport of every kind of fortune is now the little knot of boys who were
the companions of my childhood; and you and I, my dear soul, being
alone too erratic to turn soldier, chamberlain, artisan, or parson,
have become that remarkable thing called Doctor of Philosophy, having
had just sufficient brains between us to write a dissertation. Brains
enough to find our way into the Bremen cellars, however.
Another glass! Sure there's an affinity between wine and the tongue. It
goes quite straight till it comes to the throat; here, however, is set
up a finger-post, directing 'To the Stomach' and 'To the Head.' The
latter is the path of the nobler particles of the grape-juice; the pure
spirits that inhabit it will ever soar, and sensible, peaceful people
they are for the most part, if there are not too many of them there
together; but you know the best philosophers will quarrel when half a
dozen of them of different intellectual complexions are closely pa
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